Clean

I'm on an anti-depressant and have been since February of this past year. I'd been toying with the idea of bringing up depression to my doctor for a long time, but there were 2 events that really flipped the switch from 'Idle' to 'Go'. The first was that my dearest friend told me I seemed weathered, touchy. We don't 'see' each other every day, or every week, but we communicate on a daily basis and if my moodiness and general sourness was evident even through email, something was wrong. The second was when I burst into tears in the middle of a car dealership. Granted, I had been there for 4 hours for what was supposed to be a routine oil change when a service guy came out and said my oil plug had been stripped and it would be $400-something to replace it. That was quickly followed up by me discovering I'd lost my debit card. Normal people can take something like that in stride. I, on the other hand, crumbled into a shiny wet mess which scared the service guy into loaning me a car while we worked something out financially.

My friends know I'm on medication. My mother knows. I don't think anyone else in my family does and I don't know how I feel about that although the fact this is going in a public blog will probably negate that little problem. There's a vein of belief that mood stablizers, anti-depressants, what have you, are cop-outs. Tough it up. Be a (wo)man about it. Let go and let God. I understand that. Honestly. I tried letting go and letting God but is it impossible to think that this was His way of telling me that it's ok to be human and ask for help?

When I did talk to my doctor, she told me something surprising: sometimes a good change can trigger depression. In my case, it was getting married. Don't get me wrong - I am happier beyond words with my husband, with our life together. If I could go back and change anything I wouldn't; not one iota. But it was a big change, going from living on my own to having this whole new entity around all the time. It was a big change, but a good one. It was also quickly followed up by getting laid off, being placed in a temporary (but seemingly eternal) job situation that was also nearly ended abruptly, and an unexpected passing last Christmas. It's apparently enough to nudge anyone.

The reason this is on my mind now is that I'm scared the meds have stopped working. I feel myself falling into the same thought patterns and practices that I had before, feeling the same feelings and it scares me. My doctor was hesitant to wean me off the pills in the winter, as she said most people feel more depressed in the darker winter months anyway. It's fine that she was hesitant; I was outright petrified to stop them. We're going to see how things are in the spring.

There, that wasn't so hard to say now, was it.