My Experience with Depression

There is no hell like the one your own mind makes for you. At least that's how I'd describe suffering from depression.

Right now I'm on Zoloft, and it's working pretty well for me. It provides a subtle shift, keeps me on a more even keel. Before I went on the Zoloft, I had periods of low energy. I could barely get up in the mornings, preferring to sleep all day. When it was a bad spell, I wanted to sleep into infinity and let the bed swallow me up. I wanted to vanish, just disappear. I felt bereft, like nothing, and wanted to fade into the abyss. I felt so blank sometimes that I thought, why can't I just drift into nothingness?

It's not a raging or a vivid despair, just endless shades of oppressive grays. It's a desire, if I could even call it that, to escape the blah and bleary reality. I would have spells where intense sadness would take over. It would swoop over me, and I'd experience this horrible plummeting sensation and feel like the wind was knocked out of me. It was as if the gloom were budding from within and turning me inside out and yanking me further down.

If you've read the Harry Potter books, J.K. Rowling's description of the Dementors feels about right. Something approaches and you feel like all the joy is being sucked away. The Zoloft helped that a lot. I still get mini-plummets, but it's not a broad sweeping despair, but more like something makes you gulp and gasp for a second. A few deep breaths and usually I feel back on track.

Before the Zoloft I'd have horrible crying jags. Sometimes I would just sob. I didn't even understand what I was crying about. The sadness, the gloom would just take over and I'd feel overwhelmed. Sometimes I would just sob because it didn't make sense. I had no reason to be unhappy, to feel so blank and bleak. I'd tell myself, I have a loving husband, a job, a home, friends, good health, cats and a dog, books to read, movies to watch, a garden to tend. But no rationalization would help. I'd feel worse for feeling so horrible about what I perceived as nothing to feel terrible about. And yet I did.

Talk about a hell in your own mind, when you can't even reason with yourself. That gray gloom waits, lurks, and you can never sweep it away for good.

It's like building a dam that will never be sealed completely. Little dribbles of sadness will always leak in, no matter how much you try and reinforce against it.