In just a few weeks I will keep my last regular appointment with my therapist. It has been two years… the day of the appointment will actually be about two years and two months. I had touched on my depression and therapy briefly here in my blog, but then there was drama and betrayal and incredibly ignorant, immature, but searingly painful comments about that very depression. So that was something of a deterrent.
Two years and two months ago I was regularly spending my evenings curled into the fetal position or pacing the kitchen in circles, crying violently for hours and until I made myself sick. Regularly I would have polka-dotted eyes where the force of my distress had caused all the blood vessels in my eyelids to burst. When I wasn’t doing that I would come home from work and clean the bathroom with a toothbrush or else stare at a blank wall for hours until I could reasonably go to sleep and expect to do it all again the next day. Weekends were the worst, since I knew only about 3 people here in Raleigh and had gigantic hours of time in which I couldn’t imagine how much longer it would be before I had something to distract me from the loneliness and fear. When my therapist asked I said that no, I had not thought of suicide, but elaborated that of course I had thought about it, just with the awareness that I did not have the courage to ever act on those thoughts.
In the back of my head were several very strong forces. Thoughts armed with 23 years of indoctrination are not weak. I was scared of being put on medication. My mom was unstable (putting it nicely) for the majority of my life and it had been blamed on “the medicine.” My religion had told me that God should be enough and that if He wasn’t enough then it was because I lacked faith or had some major sin in my life. My attempts to find support through church/religion in Raleigh were individually disastrous and I had given up on them and on God for the time being. But that didn’t mean that it would be easy to turn my back on their teachings or the fear of encountering the instability that made my mom what she was.
Enter My Friend. I won’t name her since she would be uncomfortable with that, but she does know very well who she is. Her very patient questions had begun several months before when things first began to go from “a rough patch” to “abnormal.” After one particularly uncontrollably evening something switched in my head, and I asked her how to go about finding a therapist. She later told me how nervous she was for my first appointment… knowing how terrified I was of everything relating to this depression, if that first appointment had gone poorly I may not have ever gone back.
But it didn’t go poorly. It went exceptionally well. I felt very comfortable and was shocked to hear that this therapist wanted to see me every week. That seemed like an awful lot to me. But I kept the appointments and after many, many months of squirming painfully on a green couch I slowly started to trust her. Talking was helping. I was still depressed and went through weeks where functioning was limited to making it to work… usually… and then to my appointment. This went on for a solid year. It took 12 months of talking myself to a more functional, but inadequate, level of wellness to recognize that talking alone was going to be insufficient. I believe that one of the hardest things I have ever done… if not THE hardest thing I have ever done… was fill the prescription for Lexapro, my antidepressant. I had to trust that My Friend and my therapist would be able to recognize, even if I couldn’t, whether or not that medicine was making me crazy like my mom had been.
Fourteen months after taking that first pill I cannot imagine a life without therapy. Not only am I more stable, more happy, more functional and present, more content and peaceful, than I have ever been in my life… if I had not been through this process I would not be capable of having a relationship with My Beloved. I told My Friend a few months ago that if I had to do it all again, if those two years of pain were what it took to bring me to a place where I could not only receive love, but express it to others… it was all worth it. I would do it all again. Because without those changes I would have lived an incredibly stunted, mostly miserable existence.
Instead, I have nothing but happy anticipation and expectation for my future. My “now” is unfettered by anxiety and indescribably full of gratitude and joy. Most amazingly, I am HAPPY. Happy in a way I have not known until now. I am, in fact, incredibly proud of myself for making it. At the same time, I am overwhelmed with gratitude to the two people without whom I never would have gotten started. Whatever good things, whatever joy I have in my life today and tomorrow and ten years from now, I hope that you remember that you have been a part of that. You will never… ever… cease to be a blessing, and a key part of changing my life forever for the better.
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July 27, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Cassie
Wow hon… yet more things we have in common. About two and a half years ago I was in a pretty bad place mentally because of a failed relationship. Lots of laying curled up in a ball on the couch unable to do anything including eat. I’d talk myself out of going out by convincing myself that no one wanted to see me, meanwhile my friends didn’t understand why I was blowing them off.
I started seeing a therapist and that helped quite a bit. I started taking Lexapro and that, well, it’s hard to explain how significant of a positive difference it made.
The experience for me was that I was a little afraid of how a drug would “change who I am”, but I was much more afraid that it wouldn’t work at all, that I would have to try a bunch of different things, that there would be horrible side effects and that nothing would help. But the first thing I tried, well, if I was the religious type, I would call it a miracle.
I started Lexapro very shortly before I moved to NC. After I moved I felt like I was doing really well and never really got around to finding a therapist in Southern Pines. Now I’m realizing that I have some deep seeded issues about how I feel about myself (from, of course, my mother) that would really benefit from examination in a therapy setting. Also, actually having health insurance again looks like it’s going to be a possibility soon and that always helps.
I talk about this sometimes on my LiveJournal, but only in friends-locked posts because there is a stigma out there. You should get a dummy LJ account so you can tune in to my crazy train.
August 12, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Jessica
Congratulations, Amanda!! You absolutely should be proud of yourself – there are so many of us who are incredibly proud of you!
August 22, 2008 at 4:18 pm
E L
Your post really tugged at my heart. Jessica is right – you should absolutely be proud of yourself. And should revel in your happiness (knowing, sadly, that there will always be political atrocities to rant about when the ranting mood strikes again
.
Sometime, whenever we find (or make) time to actually spend together outside of Facebook (which I hope we will!), I’d love to talk with you more about your experiences. I, too, have had my share of dark times – especially when my mom was diagnosed with cancer and I was miles away and helpless. That started several years of my life of regular therapy, prozac and then wellbutrin. I’ve stopped the therapy now, mostly because I can’t afford it, but also because I feel it really helped me to find such a happier place. I lost weight that I’d been unhealthily trying to lose for years, I made it through some terrifying flaming hoops of grad school, and I met the guy I’d been waiting to meet all my life. My life is happier than it has ever been, but I’m still taking wellbutrin. I’ve lowered the dosage, but haven’t gone off of it. I always figured I would eventually, but there is always some excellent excuse for not doing it now (consisting of high stress situations on the near horizon). I think, sometimes, I’m just afraid that if I stop taking it, I will go back to being a me that I’m not as happy with, or a me that is just not as happy. That I’ll re-gain all the weight, that my husband — who never knew me in those “before” days — might find it hard to adjust to a different me. Really, I just don’t want to be different, and I sometimes question whether I am me, or the medicine. I think I’m me, but the doubts are there. I wonder if you ever have similar thoughts/fears?
A discussion for another time… Have a wonderful weekend ahead! I know your certain someone is really excited about it! I am just so incredibly happy that you have come into his life; he has always been such a kind, happy person, but I have never seen him more content or feeling more positive about his life and himself. You two, together, are magic!