Well Hey guys, once again.
It has been a while since my last post but once again, I just haven't been feeling up to writing. As I said before on Facebook, this post is going to be about my battle with depression and anxiety. If you aren't up to reading this, I completely understand. The point of this post is not to get attention or sympathy, I simply want to help. This issue is not one that is really talked about, and it's actually a very prevalent thing that happens to many people, so if I can reach out to even just one person with this post, then I will be completely satisfied.
I don't quite remember when it all started. The first thing I can recall happening is that in the 4th grade I started having these "attacks" at night. I would feel like I was about to throw up and I couldn't breath. I would spend hours sitting by the toilet at night just crying, and no one knew what was wrong with me, or why I was doing this. They started getting worse and worse, to where I would have them at school during the day, and it was really just embarrassing. I think sometime around the 8th grade I started seeing an off-campus counselor. For those of you who don't know, a counselor is basically a psychiatrist that can't prescribe medications to you. All she could do was talk to me every week and see what she thought was wrong, then if further action needed to be taken, she could send me to a psychiatrist/psychologist, whatever their name is. I really don't know.
I talked to the counselor once a week for maybe a few months. I don't quite remember, it didn't seem like very long though. She said that I had an "anxiety disorder," and I probably needed medication for it. She even suggested another doctor to go to in order to get the medication, but my dad was pretty adamant about not having me put on medication. At the time, I really didn't understand it, but now I am so thankful that he was so against it.
I guess I just decided to cope with whatever was going on, because eventually I got to a point where I could feel one of these "attacks" coming on, and I could talk myself out of it, so I guess for a few years I was "okay."
Around my junior year, I started beginning to feel very tired and ill all the time. I wouldn't ever want to get out of bed. I really didn't see the point in waking up everyday and going to school. I thought this was just early onset senioritis kicking in, because I was so extremely ready to graduate. But the feeling started getting worse around october when I went through a really really hard break up. I finally went to the doctor and she prescribed me a medicine called Citalopram. She never actually said that I was "depressed" or had depression, because she was just my regular family doctor, but as soon as I took the medicine I started feeling better. I was happier and I wasn't sleeping nearly as much. I was on the medication for only a few months, and it stopped working. I was only taking 20 mg a day, so my doctor bumped me up to 40 mg a day. Taking 40 mg a day made me feel like I was going to die. I slept on average 13 hours a day, and really hated getting out of bed. It was almost like my entire body was in pain, so all I could do was sleep to not focus on the pain.
We changed my dosage down to 30 mg a day, and it was alright for a while, but after a few months I was back to where I was originally.
Going through this whole process really made me just want to die. I would wake up in the morning and just loathe having to get up and put effort into seeing people and doing things. I didn't want to be on a medicine, I didn't want to have to rely on a pill to determine my mood that day, or how much energy I would have. I had absolutely no hope for the future.
Very recently, my doctor put me on a new medication called Fluoxitine. It is suppose to help with my lack of energy. This pill has made me tired, and angry, and extremely irritable. I have missed many days of work and school. I am mostly just tired of having to change medications at this point.
However, I do have some days that are good where I can wake up and force myself to get out of bed and get dressed. A friend recently told me that there will be an easier day up ahead. I am using this to get me through this rough time. I'm still sad, angry, tired, and extremely lethargic, but I know that there will be a day soon where life is so much easier for me.
I really hope that this post helps someone. If you have any questions for me about my personal battle, I'd be more than happy to answer them for you, and if you really took the time to read this, I very much appreciate it.
As always, stay excellent!
