My name is Jennifer and...

Usually my posts are funny, light or humorous. Containing quips and stories of ironies happening in my day. But something happened recently that has made me change the tune of this post to be more of come to Jesus/reality check, sit with me for a while and listen to my life while I tell you about some deeper stuff. So please feel free to stay and listen. It won't be soap boxy, I hope. But I do ask that you understand that, in the end, you take away with you the idea that depression affects more people than you may realize, even in your direct circle of family and friends.

I suffer from depression. I feel like I am in group... 'My name is Jennifer and I suffer from Chronic Depression.' Ever since I was about 10 or so I have been bounced back and forth in therapy of one sort or another, even before I truly understood what therapy was. I don't know when it started, the depression, or how, what the trigger was, or even if there was one. All I remember is that it was always there. Chronic. Constant. Growing. Omnipresent. Like a cancer eating away at me. Always. When I hit puberty things went nuclear. Hormones combined with pre-existing depression together triggered an altogether new experience of lows I never thought were possible and I entered the world of medication. Back in the mid 80's depression medication was not as sophisticated as it is today. There wasn't a lot of choice. It was Prozac or Prozac, at least as far as my Psychiatrist was concerned.

It was also very difficult to 'prove' my depression to my Physician to even get referrals to Psychiatrists in the area. I had to go to my Physician on an actual 'I can't get out of bed bad day' to actually show him I was crying out of control, was near suicidal, was having a panic attack, can't breathe, am stressed with anxiety, etc. before he would actually believe me. He had to see it to believe it. To believe me. When I went on a good day, he actually dismissed me out of his office, telling me I was fine and just hormonal. A mistake which could have been deadly had I gotten to that point, which I thankfully never did.

So aside from feeling like an outsider, as every teenager does already, I felt even more so with the label of Chronic Depressive hanging over my head, and in my file. I did the talk therapy thing for years while I lived in New York, stayed on the same medication while I was in New York and everything seemed ok. Then I moved to Atlanta.

With that move came new Doctors, Therapists and Psychiatrists. Some even provided new diagnosis, to which I didn't think I needed any, but they were the ones with all the medical schooling so ok. New medications were given for a condition I didn't have... at all. And after 18 months of monstrous doses of medications for bi-polar disorder, (from Zoloft alone to super high dozes of Depakote, Trazadone, Seroquil, Rantidone, Xanax and Wellbutrin) which bring down manic episodes in people who suffer from mania, but in depressives make you more and more depressed as it did me, and @2007 I had a total and complete and utter breakdown.

I was sitting on the bathroom floor with a bottle of pills when I was found. Silent. Not speaking. Crying my eyes out. Unable to stop. Unable to communicate. At all. I was catatonic. I was brought to the ER under lockdown and was brought immediately to a Psychiatric Treatment Center some 30 miles away where I was also admitted under lockdown. Just me, my journal, a pen, hairbrush, some clothes and some underwear.

I didn't speak. I actually couldn't speak. To anyone. Not the nurses, doctors, therapists, group leaders, NA or AA team leaders, no one. I just wrote in my journal and listened. Wondering why I was there. I wasn't an addict. I wasn't an alcoholic. And I cried. I cried a lot. They redid my medications, weening me off the heavy doses of the wrong pills I was on and putting me on the right doses of the correct medications I should have been on. I had been sleepless for over a week before being admitted and I was sleeping now. Sleep was good. And I wasn't holding a pill bottle in the bathroom to kill myself, it was a bottle of Tylenol PM because I was desperate to sleep but I was up to 6 pills a night and they weren't working and I couldn't stop crying. And that's when I was found.

Sometime during the first four days I started really listening in all of the group meetings, of which there were a lot of. And I had an epiphany in one of the Narcotics or Alcoholics Anonymous meetings they made me go to, I forget which. And that was the realization that I really wasn't as different as I thought from any of the addicts or alcoholics in the center with me. The only difference was that in my depression, I didn't reach for a drink, the pills, the crystal meth. I punished myself in other ways though, and in my past I had indeed reached for other things to numb my pain. And that made me realize we really weren't so different after all. So I started listening more. And eventually I started to speak.

After a week and a half I went home. Found a new Psych & Therapist and went back to work. Life was good, then life threw shit at me. I keep going to my Psych and she keeps tabs on my meds. I need to find a new therapist though. I need to get back into talk therapy. That's a constant good thing to always have as an outlet.

Anyway, the point of this whole story isn't to say Hey I'm a functional Chronic Depressive, it's to say no matter who you are, everyone knows someone with some sort of emotional issues somewhere in their lives if they know it or not. What triggered my standing up and being counted today was one of my dearest friends and her 8 year old daughter. The other night she came home to a note her daughter had written and left on her bed, addressed to her Dad saying she wished she had never been born. Ever. And that she wanted to leave home forever and be left all alone forever.

It's not the first time her daughter had made statements like this and it's caught my attention every time. That's how I felt when I was 10. It always starts somewhere and we just need to recognize it so we can get that person help as soon as possible so they don't feel alone and so they know those feelings are OK. Most importantly so they don't feel alone. Especially at 8 years old. I'm thankful my parents did.

So, I'm not trying to be preachy at all, but please be aware when you hear negativity from children, especially from young children. Crying out for help can start at any age. Whether it stems from internal stress, anxiety, bullying at school... They look to us to help them out and sometimes they just don't know how to ask for help. That leaves us needing to know how to listen.