I Wish I Had the Blues

I was diagnosed with clinical depression some years ago. The sadness I felt when my mother passed away was completely different from the sadness I felt from my very existence. While I’ll never get over my mother’s passing (who does?), I know the difference between that and what I went through these past few weeks. And the latter is more frightening. Much more frightening. One requires time to get over, the other requires medication.

There are days when I’m just sad, when I start thinking about things that maybe bring up memories of mom or home or something else I really miss. That’s when I’m blue. It passes. Then there are days when I can’t get out of bed without serious self-talk, when showering and even eating is just out of the question. Even when everything is going well, when I have no apparent reason to be sad, I have trouble making myself even get up to go to the restroom. That’s depression. It passes, too, but it comes back, sometimes worse than before.

Right now, I don’t have insurance, so medication isn’t going to happen. It’s difficult for me, anyway. With my ADD - which took years for me to get diagnosed because of myself, not because of my doctor – I tend to have a paradoxical reaction to some medications. Allergy medications, for example. If I want to sleep, I need to take the non-drowsy formula. Aleve Cold & Sinus keeps me up. I don’t take it past 1:00 PM if I want to get to bed some time that night. I’ve only ever tried one anti-depressant, and it worked well enough. Except for one thing: it kept me awake at night. Took me hours to get to sleep, something I’ve always had trouble with anyway. The recommendation for the medication is to take it before bed. I took it first thing in the morning. And yet, more than 12 hours later, I still couldn’t sleep. I was exhausted. Sure, I wasn’t depressed any more, or as depressed, anyway, but I couldn’t sleep, and that’s not helpful.

I know, especially after the last few weeks, that I need to do something. It’s a scary thing when the thought of ending life comes so easily. I know I don’t want to end it all, I always come up with excuses for continuing to exist. So, once I get health insurance again, it’s back to being a mental guinea pig. Medications. I’m not a fan of medications for the sake of medicating. I do thing we are relying a little too heavily on that and not enough on just talking about what’s going on. But I also know there are those who really need medications to survive. Unfortunately for me, I appear to be one.