It’s my anniversary!
Eight years ago today, I took my first antidepressant.
I should have picked up on it sooner. My journal from junior year of high school is full of clues. Maybe I just didn’t want to deal with it so I subconsciously ignored the signs. But junior year of college, things finally got bad enough that I couldn’t ignore them anymore. I’d walk around campus crying for absolutely no reason. I couldn’t make myself care about academic work. I remember one day walking to band practice purposely staying in the middle of the road and not caring if someone ran over me (granted, it wasn’t a very busy road, but still). I think that’s when I really knew something was wrong and I needed help.
It was the beginning of an impossible uphill climb. I called home. (Too many times to count.) I got permission from my professors to turn in assignments late. (One of them already knew something was going on because I’d had a complete breakdown in his office.) With the support of a friend who had gone through her own fight with depression freshman year and was also a psychology major, I made appointments at the student mental health center and the counseling center. (Before choir one day she actually sat with me while I sobbed and held my hand when I’d finally calmed down enough to make the phone calls.)
Around Thanksgiving, I wrote this note on my Facebook page:
Hey guys, I’m sorry if I’ve seemed rude or anti-social or just completely out of it lately. I don’t really know what I want to say. This semester has been tough. I’ve been struggling with depression since at least junior year of high school, and it got so bad around the beginning of September that I finally realized what it was and tried to do something about it. But my medicine stopped working a week or so ago. I’m sure you don’t really care. Anyway. Thanks to those of you who’ve supported me, through prayers or hugs or smiles or even just being there, or for understanding when I just don’t want to be around people. You have no idea how much it means to me. I hope that someday I can be that bubbly happy person who everyone thinks I am. I’m tired of having days of wanting to run away from myself, feeling trapped, crying so much I feel sick, not caring about anything, wanting to fall down the stairs so maybe other things won’t hurt so much. I’m not saying this to make anyone feel sorry for me or worry about me, it’s just the truth. I do still have good moments; it just seems like they’re really rare these days. Which I guess makes them that much more special, but all the same, I’d like them a bit more often. Anyway. I love you.
I will never know how I made it to Christmas. All I know is that I didn’t do it alone.
Eight years ago today was also the very first Friday of Awakening (a Catholic retreat I helped staff) at Vanderbilt University. God definitely made these two events happen the same day on purpose. I spent the whole weekend praying with awesome people and doing everything in my power to give the retreaters the best experience possible. I stayed up all night writing notes to each one of them, and it didn’t even matter when my hand started cramping up so bad I could barely hold a pen. Getting out of my own head and focusing 100% on other people created such an internal shift that it was like one Martha left for the retreat on Friday, and a completely different Martha came back on Sunday. There was still a long hard road ahead, but Awakening was the hand that pulled me back up and made it possible to start moving forward again.
The struggle is by no means over, and I do still have bad days. But as the battle slowly became easier to fight, I’ve gradually come to realize…
And you find out you don’t have to be happy at all to be happy you’re alive
A Shift In The Light 