[note: I first wrote and shared this with friends in September 2016]
I’m not sure of the last time I did laundry. I haven’t had internet for months because it went out and I’m too embarrassed for a tech to see what I’m living in. We had an office remodel last week, so I worked from home but mostly laid in bed and occasionally cried because it turns out fear of losing my job is what gets me upright in the morning. I do shower almost every day, but only after ugly, protracted lectures to myself about how failure to do so would make me even more disgusting.
Going through my history with a psychiatrist en route to a diagnosis of Major Depressive Disorder I can see that there have been big episodes and more subtle patterns along the way. Depending on how long you’ve known me, maybe you remember me dropping out of college and not even bothering to withdraw from my classes to avoid a 0.0. Or the time I moved to a random town in Wisconsin because I needed literally anything about my life to change. Or maybe you’ve just seen my weight fluctuate wildly or my decade-long inability to have a committed romantic relationship or those periods of time where I couldn’t seem to have a drink without getting blackout drunk.
I saw all those things because I lived them, but I always told myself that they were personal failings. I was lazy and undisciplined. If I would just exercise and meditate and do all the things that everybody else seemed to be able to do then I would be just as ok as any of them. But it’s not that simple. Things rarely are, I guess.
So why am I talking about this? Because I have so much. I have parents who think I hung the moon and can see when I’m a little off, but don’t know what to say. I have a boyfriend who does tell me I’m sexy when we both know I’ve gained 100lbs and who doesn’t tell me to go to hell when I constantly question the love that he expresses every day. I have friends who accept flaking on plans, periods of self-centeredness, and nights out full of crankiness or drunkenness or both. Still, with all of those blessings the only thing that has really given me hope is a small set of people (I would love to thank them publicly but will not “out” them because their story is their own) who have shared their darkest times and their ugliest thoughts and how their path of therapy and meds helped make them feel human again. They tell me they believe it can happen to me. They tell me I deserve for it to happen to me.
Ok, so then why am I talking about this NOW when I’m still so incredibly lost? My first instinct was to wait to do this until I was on the other side of it all to tell you a rousingly inspirational success story. But the reality is I have already wasted SO MUCH time because of ignorance and stigma. Because I didn’t believe that I had a “real” illness that required a professional to treat. I’ll never get that time back, and that hurts. So if any of this sounds familiar, please please PLEASE don’t waste another second of your life. Get professional help if you’re ready. Reach out to your friends who have struggled and tell them what you’re dealing with. Reach out to me. I won’t have any answers, but what I will have is understanding and solidarity. It might help more than you could imagine.
Be good to yourself and be well. Let’s do this together.
