I don't know if I can remember far enough back to think of a time when I didn't have some sort of depression. Not that all of my childhood was bad, just troubled, and I am sure that has a lot to do with it. My bio-mom left when I before I was 2, that has to screw a kid up somehow, right? And Dr. C says that my depression is biological, so maybe I was just born this way.
But this latest round, this round that has had me in the worst place I have ever been in my life, it started in September of 2011. I wanted to have lap-band surgery. I am obese...there, I said it. I have been obese most of my life. (Which really isn't that hard because nowadays if you are 40 pounds overweight you are considered obese.) So, I wanted to have lap-band surgery. And in order to do that you have to jump through hoops and balance balls on your head, and one of those balls is psychological clearance. Hmm...not a test that I thought I would pass, but I had no idea how bad I would fail.
I met with the doctor one random Tuesday in August 2011. He was very nice, had super comfortable chairs in his office, and was very welcoming. We settled in for what was booked as a 75 minute appointment, and he started to ask a lot of questions. A LOT of questions. Questions about my family, my career, my education, my support system. He asked about J and our kids. And then he wanted to talk about difficult things. My miscarriage in 2008. My assault in college. My bio-mom leaving. My childhood. I answered the questions how I thought he wanted me to answer them, eliminating some elements, making some seem less violent or traumatic than they really were. And in the end, I got my clearance. I stood up shaking, shook his hand, and started to walk out the door. And then he said, and I can remember it like it just happened, he said, "Just so you know, I do follow up appointments." I smiled and walked out of his office. The drive between his office and work was about an hour, and I cried the whole time. I had just told him more information, true or not, than I had ever spilled to anyone. And it shook me to the core.
I couldn't get our appointment out of my head. I was fixated on it. I played over and over again. I began to cry at the drop of a hat where I would have normally plowed through the stress. So I made another appointment with him. I tried to explain what I was going through, and how I was struggling. We talked through it, and he wanted me to continue sessions. Each one was more painful than the next. I found myself divulging information that I had never shared before. It was literally taking the scab that had been covering all my pain for the past 30 some years, and ripping it off. And I was bleeding all over the place.
After a month of meeting with him, and my mental health deteriorating, he suggested that I join a day program to learn some coping skills. And this is when things start to get fuzzy for me. I took a leave of absence from work and agreed to try his suggestion. I remember the day program. I hated it. It was large, the "small groups" had over 20 people in them and the larger group sessions easily held 50. I remember having a really, really bad day, and needing to talk to someone at the end of program, and there was no one available. They sat me in a chair in the corner and told me to wait. And I waited for over an hour, crying the entire time. I was devastated. I was overwhelmed. It was the first time that I felt suicidal since I was in college. I am not clear on what happened when, but I believe that the end result was that I left the program at that hospital and we found another one, closer to home, that was much smaller. I'm talking 20 people total in the program, small groups had about 6. It was perfect, but by this time I was done. I was toast. Within a few days my counselor at this program had me involuntarily admitted to the hospital. Thinking back, I needed it. I was not safe. I was not happy. I could not handle all the information that my head was running over and over about my past. But I was also terrified. I was hospitalized. What did that say about me? Me, who used to be a college professor and academic advisor was now reduced to what I thought was the stereotypical hospital patient. What was I doing to my family? What kind of role model was I for my kids?
I was hospitalized for two weeks, I think, and then released back to the day program. I had pretty much done everything the hospital had wanted me to do, and I had said what they wanted me to say, so I was really in the same place as I was the first time I started the program. And, being as they were experienced and smart and all, within a few weeks they hospitalized me again. Only this time when I went through the ER, the hospital I preferred was full, they couldn't find another local hospital with beds, so I was sent to a state hospital. Holy Crap. Have you ever been to one of those? I am talking people with major mental illness who live there. Forever. I freaked out. My husband was able to get me out of there within 48 hours, and I was thankful, but the only place that now had a bed was hospital A where I had hated the day program. Ugg. I took it. I spent Christmas there. It was horrible. I lied and got out of there as soon as I could. But by this time they had been trying me on so many different medications that my head was all screwed up and I couldn't tell left from right. Hospital B, with the beloved day program, took me back again (third times the charm, right?) and that SAME DAY sent me right back inpatient. I mean, I had tasted less than 4 hours of freedom and I was back in the hospital. And, I think, this is when I gave up. When I really started to say that my life was never going to change and I was going to be screwed up forever. I felt that I had lost everything and that nothing was worth fighting for anymore. I took this 4th hospitalization very hard. I wanted to just go home and die. I was hurting so much on the inside and didn't know how to express it on the outside. So I started cutting. In the hospital. I first used my deodorant cap that I smashed on the bathroom floor, and when that was found and confiscated I used the staples that I got from the packets in group therapy. I cried, a lot. A whole lot. The doctor suggested ECT with the promise that it would help and that I would be released earlier if I agreed to it. ECT, in itself, was horrible. I don't know what I was thinking. Well, I wasn't thinking, that was the problem. But I was released, and I did my best to try and move on. I even went back to work for about a month before I realized that I just couldn't do it. I couldn't be whole again. I was ruined. Totally ruined.
And that, my friends, is where we will break for the day. I promise that I will be back tomorrow with the rest of the story. I hope that you appreciate that this is hard to tell, and it's a little draining. But I want to get it out. I need to get it out. My only hope is that someday, somewhere, my story will help someone else....
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