Thread by @kelly_j_baker

Today, I want to talk about #depression how it feels to me & how hard it is for me to identify that I am depressed when I am depressed.

What you should know is that depression never presented for me as it does in the commercials.

My life didn't suddenly stop. I wasn't looking forlornly out a window or sitting quietly with my head in my hands or isolating myself from everyone.

Instead, it appeared that I did things as I normally did.

Everything was just hard, no, wait, everything was just so fucking harder.

Everything felt impossible, but I trudged through it anyway.

I felt low. I felt like a garbage human being who couldn't help but fuck up everything. I felt like a waste of space.

But you would never know it because I was very, very good at acting like everything was okay.

I was so good at faking that everything was fine that most people would never know that on the inside I was a seething morass of self-hate, despair, and hopelessness.

There was outside Kelly, who seemed to be able to do it all with a smile plastered to her face, and then, there was inside Kelly, who constantly wondered whether her existence was worth anything.

Most people knew outside Kelly.

Hardly, anyone saw or much less knew inside Kelly. She was low and getting lower. Her irritability barely in check. Fumbling her way through another day while convinced that nothing she did was right or good and that she definitely wasn't either

Inside Kelly didn't always feel this way because these low periods would come and go.

Sometimes, they would stay for a few days or a week. Sometimes, they would stay for weeks. Eventually, they stayed for months, but we aren't to that part of the story yet.

And suddenly, it would seem sudden but it wasn't, the low period would go away.

The smiles weren't fake anymore. Things became easier. I could move in the world without the constant self-loathing and inner turmoil.

I could just be...until I couldn't again.

I spent decades in this pattern of low periods & self-hate until I was finally diagnosed with bipolar 2 (characterized by depressive episodes a month over four years ago).

They would come and go, and I managed to struggle through them. The struggle only got harder.

A major depressive episode that lasted months and months was the reason I finally got diagnosed and started going to therapy because I couldn't move past it.

There was no powering through. The struggle was suddenly too much to handle on my own.

So, I got meds. Meds take time to work. I went to therapy. Therapy takes time to work too.

I was still depressed...until I wasn't.

Weeks later, I found myself smiling at someone and meaning it.

I was laughing at my kids' jokes and it was real laughter.

I felt good for the first time in a long time.

And I wrongly assumed that I was done depression because I felt so much better.

Yeah, that is not how it works.

I will live with depression for the rest of my life. There's no fixing it. Meds and therapy make it manageable.

It took me awhile to figure this out.

So, I assumed that my depression was gone.

And it was! For a little while!

Then, I started being exhausted all the time. I chalked it up to my already contentious relationship with sleep.

Then, I was crying, often for no reason, but that was stress.

Then, I was irritable all the time, but you know, it had to be no sleep.

Then, simple things got hard, like taking a package to UPS or returning something to the store or paying bills, but stress.

Then, it was hard to convince myself to get out of bed, but stress again.

Then, the big things got hard too.

Everything took energy I didn't have.

I would find myself going through the motions of each day but strangely distant from them.

I would smile and nod and carry on cheerful, casual conversations. I appeared to be doing all the normal things in completely normal ways.

But my emotions never matched my actions.

And I hated myself for this distance, for my inability to handle even the smallest things, for crying yet again about something that didn't matter, for being unable to will myself into action, for my constant irritability, for existing at all.

Depression had me again, and I didn't realize it until I did.

Things had to get a certain amount bad before I would be able to acknowledge that I was depressed.

I wouldn't know I was in it until I was IN IT.

I never noticed all the small signs that depression was creeping in.

I made excuses, logical excuses, because really, I didn't want to be depressed again.

I didn't want to be depressed. PERIOD.

And yet, depression is a mental illness that I have. I can't avoid it. I can't not be depressed because I decide I don't wanna be depressed.

None of this works this way.

So, I miss the signs again & again & again.

I would like to say that four years and one month after I got diagnosed & got help that I now identify depression when it first starts happening to me.

This is not the case.

Friends, I still don't know when I first get depressed, and it is not because I don't wanna be depressed. I now know depression is a part of my life, an unavoidable one.

It's because depression is sneaky & stealthy.

Depression doesn't clobber me all at once.

It creeps up on me, bit by bit, until it's cumulative effects *finally* become apparent.

I only realize I am depressed when all the facts are unavoidable.

Until then, I am miserable without exactly being able to pinpoint why.

And I cannot emphasize this enough, THIS SUCKS.

By the time it occurs to me to ask for additional help to manage my depression, I am already in the thick of it.

Help, well, still helps, but the intervention would have been more helpful to me sooner.

(My partner, a couple of dear friends, and my therapist have helped realize I am depressed much earlier than I do. I cannot emphasize how lucky I am that they intervene when I need them to.)

And yet, AND YET, during my most recent bout of depression, in which the depression got worse and worse, I still didn't consider talking to my doctor about adjusting my meds until I was really, really miserable.

And even then, I only brought it up at our six-month check in about my meds because I had the appointment scheduled.

And even, even then, my doctor asked if I was depressed and my chirpy ass was like, "NOT TODAY."

My doctor wasn't having it because she's amazing. And we were able to readjust my meds to manage my depression better.

But again, it takes weeks for the meds to work because of adjustments.

So, I was still depressed until I wasn't.

Once the meds started working this time around, I was like, "HOLY SHIT, I WAS SUPER DEPRESSED THIS TIME."

Because I don't have a sense of how bad my depression was until it passes.

And then, I remember what it feels like to have a healthy brain and I'm like, "HOLY SHIT, THIS FEELS AMAZING. DO NON-DEPRESSED FOLKS FEEL THIS WAY ALL THE TIME?"

I smile and mean it. I smile more. I laugh. Things seem better, except for all the things that are terrible about our shitshow of a world.

Being not depressed is amazing, and I forget how amazing it is every time until I experience it again.

I used to joke that I should make a depression checklist for myself that I keep where I can see it, so I can realize that I was depressed earlier.

But, let's be honest: Would I use the checklist?

Maybe or maybe not because I still miss the early signs of my depression.

Anyway, TL;DR: Depression is sneaky and stealthy. It's hard to realize that we are depressed when we are, and people experience depression differently, which makes it even harder to tell if you are depressed sometimes.

Oh look, I wrote about #depression as "hitting the wall" for @womeninhighered in...

*checks my notes*

...2020.

Figuring out that I am depressed is a continual struggle.

#MentalHealthAwarenessMonth

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