Depression - a life altering problem

This is not a very humorous posting but it is a true posting and only the first one of several.  I am not looking for sympathy - I am writing this because that is I suffer from various degrees of depression and I don't think, unless you do too, many people really understand how de-bilitating depression can be.  What follows is the beginning of my story of depression.

It's not tough for me to share this with certain people but it is tough to post this in a blog that other people will read.  Depression - what a bitch!  No other way to describe it.  I have been battling this since I was a teenager.  It comes and goes - sometimes it is fairly basic, and I can get through it pretty easily.  And then sometimes it comes on like gang busters making life a really dark place.  If any of you reading this suffer from depression you probably get it - if you don't this is all going to sound pretty foreign - but let me tell you it is very real.

My first initial bought occurred my senior year of high school.  It began towards the end of the fall marching season and continued through Christmas before I came out of it.  Remember back in 1975 - people didn't get depression and if you did there was something really wrong with you.   They would totally drug you up and put you in a hospital.  I was so depressed I wanted to end my life.  Now this was not the first time that had happened it had also happened when I was in either 8th or 9th grade.  I know how bad is it when you want to end your life in your middle teens?

What contributes to this?  Well feelings of hopelessness, despair, feeling trapped, loneliness, worthlessness, not feeling loved or accepted, and really the list could go one - but anyone of these can start it and then usually others follow depending on how deep into the muck you get.  Sometimes it can be something like a change in personal dynamics with friends, it can be (in my current situation) the loss of oneself due to injury or a long recovery period.  Frustration with your life or the life you currently are living can also lead to depression.

Of course there are levels of depression to situational type to the severe - the severe shit is serious.  The severe stuff is when you don't really eat much, you don't really want to see people, getting out of bed is a huge effort, you have zero energy, and you basically feel like crap all the time.  For me sleeping is the best because you can shut out everything when you sleep.  Headaches occur and other body aches can occur as well.  You kind of feel like you are in this haze.  Sometimes the haze clears up and the world seems clear again - but most time the haze lasts for days.  Now understand that a person suffering from sever depression is still able to laugh and enjoy the company of others.  But usually what happens is that after the get together is over - the depression worsens for a while.

Sometime you feel like you just want to jump in a car and take off for anywhere but here.  When I suffered my breakdown in 2000/2001 - I ended up going to Texas - it healed me - probably not Texas though I had some interesting times there - but probably more the getting out of "Dodge" and finding myself in a new situation and being supported by some very loving people who knew what was going on and worked really hard to help heal me.  It got so bad at one point that i - for a brief time disassociated  by speaking with a southern accent and kind of turning myself into a Texan.  My shrink said I was doing this to try to protect myself from anymore hurt.  That was a very dark time in my life for sure.  I would not leave the house, I could not drive on the road that took me to my school, and that meant I could not see my brother and sister-in-law or nieces because I had to take those roads to get to their house.  I could not stand big crowds, and I remember my dear neighbors Tina and Steve coming over periodically to check on me to make sure I was ok because my car sat for days on end.

For me it is often a daily fight not to fall into depression and then sometimes you just can't fight anymore and it consumes you like a plague or a cancer.  More to follow