Tag Archives: depression

February 14, 2019

I live with chronic depression and generalized anxiety. I am not ashamed.

By SilentlySurviving

I live with chronic depression and generalized anxiety. I’m usually high functioning enough that people wouldn’t know unless I told them. I’m pretty open about it most of the time though. I am not ashamed. If you follow me here, this definitely doesn’t come as a surprise. (LOL)

Due to changes in my medication needed to fight cancer recurrence, I have recently had to go off the main medication I took for depression for the last 18 or so years. I’m on other medications, but they aren’t enough to keep me in a state that feels like living instead of existing. I’ve been struggling since the dosage first changed in October or November, but that increased quite a bit a couple of weeks ago when I went off of it completely. I’ve been struggling to get out of bed. Struggling to make it to work. Struggling to stay at work. Struggling to find interest in things. I lack motivation. I lack energy. I feel dread and fear with no real target. What am I afraid of? I don’t even know. I just know something bad is going to happen. I do know this is not realistic. But, depression lies. And when it lies, it tells me that I have a moral failing for being this way. It tells me that I need to get it together, that I’m just stupid and lazy. It tells me that I should be ashamed of the way I am. Ashamed of who I am.

I just started a new medication yesterday that I’m hopeful will help. I see a therapist weekly. I have been able to force myself out of bed and into work. So, I’m doing fairly well to be honest. I am trying to live instead of exist, and taking the steps I need to take to do that. But it’s really difficult sometimes, and I’m honestly pretty exhausted.

I share this with you to say: If you need help, I hope that you will let someone know. If you see someone struggling, I hope that you will ask how you can help. If you are existing instead of living, I hope that you will seek the assistance that is readily available, and don’t turn away at the first sign of an obstacle. Help is out there. Help is not always easy to get. Keep trying.

I appreciate Wil Wheaton’s willingness to share his story because he’s right, his life should be pretty amazing based on objective facts, and the fact that it hasn’t been amazing for most of his years is due to a chemical imbalance, not just shitty circumstances. If you are struggling, there is a good chance your brain is trying to tell you that you just need more love, more money, more friends, a nicer car, a better job, or whatever else to be happy. I’m trying to tell you that if it’s chemical, none of those things are going to help you feel better. Medication isn’t the only answer, but for me, it’s a life saver. Literally.

❤

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Leave a comment   |  tags: , | posted in Autobiographical, Life

March 28, 2013

That Girl

By SilentlySurviving

That girl,
she wears her wounds
like battle armor,
stained with mortality.

The world,
it comes through
in black and white,
crisp with righteousness.

That pain,
it is as familiar
as breathing,
decadent with bitterness.

Her living fortress,
promising protection,
is overwhelmed by shadows.

She dreams in archetypes,
in fear and despair,
the hunted and the hemorrhaging,
she always fails before the dawn.

And letting go
is as unthinkable
as the gift of forgiveness,
a deep crevasse with no end.

(c) Sandi Adams

03.28.2013

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February 14, 2013

Broken

By SilentlySurviving

When
I was a girl
I was broken
by your hand.
Was it like
breaking a daisy?
The ones that grew
up the street,
that I gathered up
in my arms,
but never made it
home intact.

I watched you
break me
from lowered eyelashes,
they swept my cheeks.
Never make a
sudden move,
never show that
I am here.
But it’s true,
I was not there.

My mind
taken flight,
hidden
in the tombstones
in the little graveyard
I bravely walked by,
every day.
Fresh new flowers bunched
here and here on the grass.
The dead flowers,
windswept, broken,
cried out to me.

And there,
there was my tombstone,
In my house,
in my bed,
in my fear.
The fear, so reliable,
the one thing
I can always count on.
The flight from
the center to the shadows.

I was broken
in a way that
only a child could see.
I too am a child
since the night that
I took my first flight,
lashes sweeping my cheeks,
frozen in fear.
Loving parents, nearby,
saw nothing,
heard nothing,
did nothing.
There was
no broken glass,
in that soft turn
of the door handle.

Saw nothing,
heard nothing,
did nothing,
failed to see me
breaking
a little more
every time,
over time,
frozen in time,
like the graveyard flowers
dried from the crisp night air,
breaking apart into
a million little pieces
of me.

 

(c) Sandi Adams
02.14.2013

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September 10, 2012

Suicide Awareness Day, 2012

By SilentlySurviving

DEPRESSION LIES! Depression is a lying rat bastard… hard to ignore, but never trust it!
:: Today is Suicide Awareness Day, 2012. ::

If you feel hopeless and alone, remember that people love you, even when *you* don’t believe it, and they would be devastated to lose you. I’m still here based on that one bit of knowledge. (And my puppies. I think Dylan would be lost without me.)

And because I came *so close* to losing someone I love most dearly to that lying jerk, and I realized the pain that caused everyone around her. I know now that I couldn’t do that to the people that love me. Sitting with her at the hospital waiting to find out if she would live was terrifying.

And because my asshole stepfather killed himself and took his dog with him, and even though I hated him, I cried for days (possibly more for his selfishness in shooting the dog though, I’ll admit) upon hearing the news.

And because there are beautiful days around the corner, that you can’t see ahead of time. Keep your eyes open!

Learn the warning signs of suicide. http://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/GetHelp/SuicideWarningSigns.aspx
If YOU or someone you know is thinking about it, mentioning it, showing signs: Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-TALK (8255): Suicide hotline, 24/7 free and confidential, nationwide network of crisis centers.

Thanks for your attention.

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May 18, 2012

No Gold Stars?

By SilentlySurviving

DISCLAIMER: This is a depressing post, about depression. It is not addressed at anyone particularly. It is just me sharing my experience. If you don’t feel like reading it, I totally get that! Please feel free to skip it.

One of the most frustrating things about going through a clinical depression episode is that people get frustrated with me for all the things I’m doing wrong, at a time when I feel like I should be being applauded and given gold stars for making it out of bed at all.

Also, getting dressed, making it to work, paying attention to other people that I am in relationship with, going to school, doing homework, feeding myself and my animals and doing any of the other things that are expected of an adult, all feel so close to impossible, yet are mostly getting done.  I try to wear a smile and still be pleasant and kind.

I get that those things are expected.
I get that it’s frustrating for other people when I don’t do them “right”.
I get that no one will be cheering when I actually make myself do them.
I get that no one else can see that I’m actually wildly succeeding at life at these times.

It’s just really hard to feel and hear other people’s disappointment with me at a time when I’m already beating myself up for “failing at life”.  (I’m late to work a lot during these times, I agree that is a problem. But you know, I made it!! C’mon! Gold star!)

I’m seeing a professional, I’m getting help, I don’t need an intervention. Some of you may be in relationship with people that suffer with episodes of depression, maybe it will help to read this. Maybe not.

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January 10, 2012

Silently Surviving?

By SilentlySurviving

Yeah, pretty much. When I make it through another day, I am surviving.

I’ve been living with diagnosed depression for almost 20 years, but since it was diagnosed at that time as Long-Term Chronic Depression with a probable onset in my toddler years, we’ll just go with “my whole life.” (almost 46 years) Also, I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I attribute my depression and anxiety to a lovely cocktail of influences: parental neglect, emotional detachment, childhood incest, a highly-sensitive nervous system, and a genetic predisposition toward depression and anxiety. (Hey, at least there is a cocktail involved!)

Depression and Anxiety aren’t what I want to discuss here, but they are the backdrop of my life. I silently survive from day to day to day, and no one gives me a ribbon for making it another day, another month, or another year. Only other depression survivors understand the miracle of making it through each bout of depression alive, and sometimes those bouts are indistinguishable from daily life. If I had a “real” sickness, people would bring me casseroles and offer to help me however they could. Most people don’t see depression as a “real sickness” though, and I get offers of… well nothing. I don’t get offers of help or casseroles or sympathy. I get judgement, shame, criticism, guilt, etc.  It makes me never good enough. I take medication. The medication helps me remember to do things (that would never get done without it), but I have to remember to take it. I have to remember to refill it. I have to remember to pick up the refill. Taking a pill to help you remember to take a pill is all kinds of fucked up, and when I forget, I get shame and disapproval. “I THOUGHT YOU HAD THAT FIGURED OUT.” …. well, I thought so too, but OBVIOUSLY, I WAS WRONG.

I don’t want to be Debbie Downer here, just give you a little lens to view me through. I’d like to be funny. Sometimes I am. You may not see it that way. I have a pretty twisted, fucked-up sense of humor, but I know I’m not the only one, thank God. Even if no one in my personal life is that way, I see evidence of it all over the internet, and that gives me hope that someone, somewhere, understands me.

1 Comment   |  tags: , , | posted in Life