How I Finally Conquered Depression (Sort Of)

It’s been a while – welp, 25 days, to be exact – and I feel like I’ve been around the world and back in that time. It’s been a weird 25 days, an exciting 25 days, an upheaving 25 days – but most accurately, a humbling 25 days. And I’ve been searching for awhile, for much longer than 25 days, in fact, to describe exactly why I’m feeling this way. So, without further adieu, I’m about to get a little personal.

I’ve struggled with a mood disorder since I was about 11. I knew, even in my horse-obsessed 6th-grade head, that something was wrong the November day that I was standing in my kitchen, tears streaming down my acne-studded cheeks, unable to muster up the will to put away the dishes from the dishwasher, because we were all going to die someday anyway.

Insurance companies call what I “have” Depression 311, or  “Depressive Disorder Not Otherwise Specified,” because I don’t quite fit the bill for any of the DSM-IV’s finicky labels. When it comes down to it, though, is that there are some days where I cannot move, cannot think, cannot do anything but stare at a wall and breathe, in and out, in, and, out – and then there are other days where there are so many words, so much frustration, inside me, that I feel as if it’s all coming out of my very skin, and I can’t do anything but chuck innocent objects across my room and yell obscenities at the top of my lungs.

That is – when I’m not on my medication.

Now, stop. Reread the above sentence. What does it mean?

It means this: “She can’t be a normal person unless she’s on her medication.”

Welp, cool life, Sarah.

But technically, yes. And this is why, on April 2nd, when I ran out of my prescription for a lousy 20mg-per-day pill, I didn’t go through the hassle of refilling it. Don’t get me wrong – this is not a new thing. I’ve tried this before. And every time, it’s the same. I think I’m fine, and then depression hits me like what happens when you forget that your attic roof slants. Yeah, ow.

So of course, what happened about a week after I stopped? What you’d expect. Did it stop? No. So I went back, as I always do – but this time, I had realized something. When I stop taking those teeny-tiny pills, it’s always with a resolve – I don’t need medication to make me a normal, functioning human being. And when my mood inevitably starts to downswing, I lose faith in myself.

Until now. Because what I really should have been saying to myself was this: I need medication to help me conquer something that shouldn’t be a part of me, but unfortunately is. Depression is not me. It never was, even on that November day in my kitchen back in 2002. It’s just something that’s always going to be there, unless I fight it. And that fight is part of who I am. Not a chemical imbalance, or a dependence on 20 mg per day.

So what I mean by this all, is that we all have buried within us things about ourselves that we want to change, but can’t. And what I say to you, mes cheries, is this: don’t. There are some things that you cannot change, no matter how many times you try. These past 25 days have showed me that this road of self-discovery is filled with shifts and changes and upheavals, in perceptions and relationships and experiences. However, the final destination is acceptance. Not a “giving-up” acceptance, but an acceptance where you say, “Okay, c’est comme ça,” and then you go out and you succeed even more because of it. … And that sometimes, in order to be at peace with something that makes you upset, or ashamed, you simply have to reword it.