5 Years

5 years ago today I took my first anti-depressant. That day I went to my doctor and asked him to help me. He gave me the medication and put me off work on sick leave for a month. That days was brutal. I was in no shape to be making big decisions like taking meds, frankly I was in no shape to be asking for help either.  Somewhere inside I knew that I needed to though.

The weeks, more like months, leading up to that day were awful. I was descending further into the black hole daily. I was trying a lot of things to make it better but nothing worked. And I was certainly at a point where I was no longer able to hide that there was something wrong. Depression is awful. When the idea of taking my own life started to be appealing (not the first time in my life) I knew something had to change. I went to the psychologist I was seeing at the time in a desparate state.

She did something that was awful at the time and so helpful. She looked at me straight and said, " you have depression and you should see your doctor about medication because it is obvious that just therapy isn't working". Hard to hear and harder to act on. I did it though.

That black hole is a place that I never want to return to, and that I live in fear of. The memory of it is what drives me to continue to see a therapist, to see my doctor 4 times a year to make sure the meds are still working, to continue to find ways to live better with seems to be a chronic condition, and to talk about my experiences.  All of these things help me, and I hope that by talking it will help others.

The last 5 years have been a pretty wild ride. Much of it has been really hard. Dealing with some of the causes is an ongoing and tough process. Living near the top of or out of the black hole, depending on the day, makes it all worth it. In this place there is joy, there is happiness, there is sadness, there is grief and all sorts of other emotions. The biggest thing there are here are love and light. Two things that are essential for me to feel alive and the 2 things that I was deprived of in the dark hole.

And so the journey continues....