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How I Maintain Mental Health
When I feel depression coming on, I head to nature
I won’t minimize the effects of depression on living life. It is more than soul-sucking. It can be debilitating.
When I was a teenager, and I could drive myself, I’d often escape into the desert just to sit under the stars. It was peaceful and lifted the oppression I often felt at home.
More than that though, it kept me sane in a time when my depression and manic episodes were somewhat out of control. I took medicine too, but since my bipolar had not yet been diagnosed, it was always the wrong medication. I often felt numb and would still succumb to the cycles of bipolar.
A little background — I was diagnosed with bipolar II disorder when I was 37 years old. That means for much of my teenage and adult life, I felt out of control. It was scary because while I long suspected what was happening, I didn’t have the ability to control it.
And because the medication I took was often wrong, I would stop taking it for various reasons. Usually I didn’t like the side effects, but most often I thought I could handle whatever was going on with my mind.
I was wrong, and my mental illness reached it’s pique when I was going through my divorce. I’m sure the stress of the divorce was a trigger.