Eating My Cake

I have never been comfortable admitting when I am depressed. It is such an unusual sensation for me, and therefore one I fight tooth and nail every time.

However, right here and right now I will say it… I’m depressed.

It’s not as if I haven’t battled this ugly monster before. I experienced severe depression twice in my life. Once when was between fourteen and fifteen, and then again my freshman year of college when I was between eighteen and nineteen. While I’m human and have certainly felt depressed for a few hours or days at many times in my life, that is NOT the same as being in a severe depression.

Rationally, I understand that there are many things in my life right now, many challenges before us, that would cause any person to struggle to cope. Here’s just a short list:

1) My husband has MS and I worry about him because of it
2) I have fibromyalgia and live in chronic pain
3)I had my period for about seven week with terrible cramps and think I have endometriosis
4) Having my period is a slap in the face of my infertility issues
5) I’ve come to realize that it’s better we didn’t have kids because of our health issues
6) I hate knowing I’ll never hold a child created by us in my arms
7) My therapist essentially abandoned me, and she and I really clicked
8 ) My father-in-law, a wonderful man, died recently
9) My baby sister has been struggling and is now back in the hospital for depression and cutting
10) My brother’s in jail, and while I think it serves him right, he’s facing 18 years and it’s deeply upsetting for Missy and my dad, who will probably not see him outside of a jail cell again in his life
11) My mother’s a bitch who dropped 30 grand on his criminal case, but was never planning to pay for Missy to go to college
12) The economy has definitely impacted us

And I could go on and on…

So I look at this list, and realize… well, duh, sweetie… of course you’re depressed. If any of my friends had just one of these challenges on her list and was depressed, I’d tell her how understandable that is, and do all I could to support her through the difficulty. So, why am I so hard on myself???

I’ve made an appointment to see my doctor, and will have my medication tweaked. I take Lexapro, mostly for anxiety… but it IS an antidepressant, so hopefully if the dosage is raised, I’ll feel somewhat better (just as an aside, I have no issues accepting my anxiety problems… perhaps because I’ve been dealing with them for about as long as I can remember and that makes it just a part of who I am?).

The real frustration for me is how little of what I listed up there I can control, and how it impacts things I can control (like school, which I’ve been struggling with). I start to feel like, well, I can’t change any of it, so I just have to suck it up… but that hasn’t been easy to do, and there’s an awful lot up there to suck up.

Anyway, this is why I haven’t been posting much lately. My husband and I have spent a lot of time playing in SecondLife together… it’s an escape we desperately need right now, and since he’s with me there, we have a lot of fun. It gives me a chance to do things I can’t do in real life… like not have pain or seven week long periods. Like have a baby. It sounds silly, but it helps… and my doctor supported this for my husband, so I know she will for me, too.

I’m going to be taking on a neat little partnership of sorts here soon. I’m excited about it because I think it has the potential to really help some of my readers be more comfortable in their home and work lives.

More soon…

xoxo,
Juliet