Hey Depression!

Depression, Listen up! I have something to say, YOU SUCK!! YOU SUCK!!! YOU SUCK!!!! I'm sure you've heard this before from millions of people but now you are going to hear it from me!. You have been messing up my life since I was 8 years old and I hate you for that. I hate you for all the times you left me crying on the floor wishing I were dead. That happened a lot over the years. I'm curious. Does that make you proud? I let you control me year after year. I didn't go out a lot because you prefer I stay home, alone, crying in my closet over what a pathetic creature I was. I even helped you sometimes by making lists about all the ways I was worthless. I believed you when you said, " No one would care if you didn't show up." Depression you were wrong, but I'm sure you knew that and you were laughing at me for believing you. I hurt my family by not showing up to parties that were important to them. I hurt my friends by canceling our plans at the last minute because I ruined their evenings. No, you preferred to have me stay in and self-medicate. I used over the counter sleep medication, pills that were prescribed for migraines, and sometimes I would get my Mom to give me Valium. I just wanted to sleep to get away from you. There is no depression in sleep. Sleep was my best friend. It was my only way to really cope with the sadness and pain. I started drinking Nyquil like it was soda just to be able to sleep continuously. I started that at age 12. My Mother also suffered from depression and she took medication as well. The meds she took caused drowsiness. She also escaped in sleep. When I was 15 I started stealing her medication in order to get back to my friend sleep.

Depression, you turned me into a thief. I, as an adult, stole from anyone I could my Mother, Sister, friends and from a woman whom I truly hated. She was an evil, slimy, disgusting, whore who did everything she could to take my sister away from me but that didn't make stealing from her right. My sister, Liz, caught on to the fact that I was stealing her pain medication. She started hiding them from me. I became so ashamed of myself and that action made me stop. I beat myself up about this for years. I'd like to think I'm a better person now but who knows. I apologized to my Mom and Liz but I never really apologized to any of my friends so whoever is reading this that I stole from whether you knew it or not, I'm so sorry. I showed you disrespect and I haven't ever forgotten or forgiven myself. Linda, you were a constant source of strength for me and I took your pain medication. I'm very sorry. I can't say that I'm sorry about stealing from the vaginal wart hog, she was a horrible woman but that didn't make it right. I wish I could say I wasn't that person but for several years I was. I needed to be able to sleep and that was the easiest way. None of this was OK. I acknowledge my failures and this one one of the biggest.

Depression, you took away my voice. I believed all the horrible things that every bully ever said to me " you're fat, you're ugly, you're stupid, you're gross, you should probably kill yourself." One of the most cruel was a comment made by one Demetri Skarakas. He sat down at my lunch table, looked me dead in the face and said, " I think you are probably the most disgusting, gross and ugly girl ins this whole school including, ( I will not say her name but she was another bully magnet. A very sweet girl). Depression, you made me believe this heart breaking lie. You know that because of you not only did I believe this but I agreed with him but to be clear, he was a tall and lanky kid with messed up buck teeth and a face that would scare snakes. I started skipping Highschool as much as possible after that attack. I stayed home two or three times a week using back pain as an excuse.

Depression, you let people treat me any way they wanted to. I didn't have the strength to stop them. One person who stood out was a girl who was one of the school power jocks. She was also an Amazon. We were in Algebra together. We sat next to each other in the front row. One day she said, " lets trade punches." She proceeded to punch me on my right arm. " Now you punch me." There was no way I was going to start this with this Amazon. She and I both knew she was way stronger than I was and that she would be able to punch me a lot harder than I could ever hit her not to mention that civilized people didn't act that way. The amazon's friends were snickering and whispering encouragement to her. Once again depression you won. She hit me several times and each blow hurt my soul. You had me believing, again, that I deserved every painful blow. She wanted to hurt me for some reason. I didn't know what that reason was but because of you I was sure that I had done something terrible to her. The teacher was only steps away from us. She had to know what was going on but she didn't stop it. When she asked if everyone understood what she had just taught I shook my head. She always seemed so exasperated with me but how could she expect me to understand while she was letting an Amazon hit me so hard she rocked my desk? Depression, you agreed with the teacher. The look on her face said it all, " How could you be so stupid?" I realized years later that you were wrong. I was never stupid. I was being assaulted right under the nose of the teacher who may have wanted to remain popular with the cool kids so she did nothing to help me. This all played into your agenda though didn't it?

There were two times that my Mom forced me to get out of the house and go out like other kids did. She didn't know what she was doing. She was throwing me right into the lion's den. I was horrified. I didn't want to leave my house. I wanted to be left alone, in my room, reading a book and forgetting about the assholes I had to go to school with. I could escape into books when I didn't want to go to sleep. I refused to go out and was threatened with physical violence that either I do what she said and go where she wanted me to go or she was going to spank me good. My mom used to hit us with a long handled metal spoon. I told her that I didn't care what she did I wasn't going to go where she wanted me to go. One of those places was the local roller rink which was a hangout for all of the burn outs, popular kids, and the kids that weren't exactly popular but weren't picked on either. The other was a school dance. The more I refused the more she hit me. She used that spoon as punctuation. She wasn't going to let me stay home no matter what I said. She even knocked my glasses on the floor when she hit me with that horrible spoon in my face. My face was set in stone. I refused to to cry in front of her. I hated her because she was helping you depression. She was helping you throw me to the wolves, to every horrible person who taunted me on the days I went to school. I hated her because I thought she should have been able to recognize you in me because she had her own depression. I think that's probably what was happening, She did see you in me and she hated you. She was probably desperate to free me from your poisonous grip. She was loving me enough to physically hurt me enough to help me be happy. She wasn't mad at me. She was mad at you, white hot mad at you, the depression that was destroying her child. She was trying to beat you out of me before it was to late but it was already to late. She also forced me to endure therapy and medication. It either gave me a headache or made me vomit. I had always wanted to lose weight but vomiting for years was not the way I wanted to do it. The stupid therapist actually told me to embrace you! EMBRACE YOU?!!! WTF!!! She wanted me to embrace you because you were part of me and if I was going to start to love myself I needed to do this. EMBRACE THIS BITCH! You are out of your unbelievably F-uped mind. I, needless to say, stopped going to therapy for a long time after this exchange. The therapist even told my mother that it was pointless to force me to go if I was going to resist so hard.

Depression, I hate the way you ruined every relationship I ever had. There were a few guys that I really cared about but I wasn't able to feel free with them. I was needy all the time and no one wanted that. I sabotaged every relationship. I started to treat men the way men treated women. I used them for sex. I hated sex. I hated everything about it like poison accept the final release. I could push whoever away from me and just feel some peace. It may have been some perverted form of peace but it's all I could find in depression. One of the saddest points in my life was built around sex. I had a short period of time that was promiscuous. I didn't give a shit about the men. I just wanted that peace. I didn't give a thought about birth control or STD's. This was fine with you wasn't it depression. It helped to make me feel like an animal. I was a disgusting pig who would have sex with whoever, whenever and after each time I felt worse about myself. I really just wished for death more and more. I remember one of my co-workers making the remark, " You will do anything with a penis." I never "did" you though, did I? Jealous? Angry? Go to hell. I am truly sorry to any man I treated badly. I have apologized to the one's that I knew had real feelings for me after I had some time to really think about them. They really didn't want me just for sex. They wanted a relationship. I didn't bother about the bar pick ups, all three of them. They didn't know my name and I didn't know there's, they were just unfortunate pieces in a damaged puzzle. I doubt they gave me a second thought either.

I have never gotten married either and that's partly your fault as well. What man would ever want to be with me. I was disgusting. I had been told that for years. Why would any man love me when I didn't even love myself? I didn't even want to be with me. I wanted to be dead.I just assumed that any interest that any man had for me was of a sexual nature. I guess those " gross and ugly" remarks remained ingrained in my head. There was also no way I was going to have children. I decided this in my early twenties. There was no way in hell I was going to risk passing you on to any child that might have the misfortune of coming from my body. I know that you, depression, are an inherited disease. You are supposed to love and protect your children. There was no way I would take that chance. I felt so ashamed of myself that during the time I was being promiscuous that I could have done this to another person. I could have caused suffering to an innocent person. Depression, you couldn't even let me have clarity enough to think about the consequences of my irresponsible actions.

I imagine that most people in my condition would go to alcohol or drugs in order to manage you, Depression. I chose alcohol because it was easier than OTC medication and I didn't want to overuse my migraine medication.

I did have a couple of years that were really quite nice. I made friends after Highschool at my first job. I loved the people I met because they were nice to me.We had a group of people who were tight. We partied together and there was real love there. There was no one who treated me like dirt. There was no one who treated me with disrespect. I finally felt like I belonged. I was happy at this job for a couple of years but depression would come in between us.

There was a new behavior that took hold of me and would be a pattern at every job in my adult life. I don't understand it anymore now than I did when it first started in my late teens and early twenties. The darkness started to creep in a few years into my first job. I started to call out of work to stay home and sleep. The self-medicating started again so I could sleep. I just didn't want to be out in public. Depression you made me feel stupid. I had a " boss" who kept telling me I wasn't doing my job right. I had been left with an incredible amount of overstock from the previous manager in this department that I managed. I had an inch of space and was expected to put out a hundred feet of merchandise. It was stupid but I felt like it was my failure. I was also berated on a daily basis by customers because I didn't have the " it" toy of the holiday season for their spoiled little darlings. I was being harassed over Cabbage Patch Dolls. I had to start a list of customers who wanted the stupid things and in some cases the customers also insisted on a certain doll. " My daughter wants one with red hair in braids with blue eyes and freckles wearing purple overalls." This was the first year of the Cabbage Patch Doll mania. I was one person who was supposed to make these damned things magically appear for over three hundred people before Christmas. Depression took this anxiety and ran with it. The endless angry phone calls and pressure from not only the parents but the stupid merchandiser that kept trying to make me get my stockroom empty. My store manager always seemed to be disappointed in me. He was always asking me why the department wasn't further along than it was. I didn't have any help, I spent my entire day answering phone calls, I worked twelve hours a day. One day that darkness that was making me call out sick over and over caused my manager to tell me that if I didn't come in that day I should consider myself fired. I went in. I was falling apart inside. The sadness of being incompetent was weighing so hard on my heart. This was you talking to me again depression and I hated you for it. I didn't want to get fired. I also didn't want to call out of work so much. My friends were starting to seem agitated by me. I don't know if that was real or if it was all in my head but either way I felt ashamed. There was one particular day that I just lost my mind. I couldn't stand hearing the phone ring and having another person yell at me. I was inundated with customers because it was holiday time but they all wanted what I didn't have. I had managed to pretty much empty my stockroom but there were holiday lay away boxes there. In the one second that I managed to be alone I went into my stockroom and hid behind those boxes on a low shelf. I don't know how long I stayed there but I heard the store operator calling for me over and over because there were phone calls waiting for me. I sat with you standing over me the whole time depression. I eventually heard different people calling for me but I stayed quiet. I practically shoved my entire fist into my mouth so my sobbing couldn't be heard. There were at least two of my friends calling for me but Teresa the loser was ready to pass out. Teresa the loser was deep in the dark hole of depressions grasp again. She wasn't ready to let anyone see her like that and depression wasn't going to let the warm love of these people help her out. There wasn't a power struggle at all, Teresa the loser gave in that day so I stayed silent in my hiding place I swear that they could sense I was there somewhere. I could see high heels go past my hiding place. I saw sneakers, jeans, Khaki's all trying to find me. I want to say I'm sorry to all of you that spent all that time looking for me. I was afraid that I was going to lose you forever if you saw what a basket case I had become. I couldn't bear the thought of you thinking less of me or worse that you would stop loving me. You were the first people who accepted me for who I was but you didn't know that depression was in my life. It came when it wanted to and I was always powerless to stop it. I also didn't want to admit it. I eventually came out of my hiding place and made up some lame excuse about where I had been. I don't remember where I said that was but you all seemed to accept what I said. I felt so guilty for lying to you but how would I explain what had really happened? The truth is I couldn't.

Depression had me convinced that you were my friends and that you loved me but, I can't say it any other way, you were to good for me and that I didn't deserve your love. I didn't deserve your kindness. You were loving someone that didn't exist because the real Teresa was a sad, pitiful woman who would rather stay in bed all day sleeping instead of doing a job that would make herself proud. You loved someone who was intrinsically worthless, who would ultimately disappoint you and become nothing but someone to avoid. I started floating around again, watching me do this job that had become an enemy to me and an ally to you depression.

This pattern repeated itself when I was in my late twenties, early thirties. I had finally found my dream job. Emergency Medical Services. It had all the things I had been looking for. It was a job where I could make a difference. I knew every day would be different and I was going to be helping people like I had always wanted to. I loved this job so much. I made friends easily, I worked hard and I enjoyed the people in the communities. I tried so hard to keep depression away but it followed me everywhere, enter disassociation. The calling out started again. I was given several written warnings and was a breath away from losing this job when I hopped over to a different one before that could happen.

I was happy again. A new start where I had hoped to leave depression behind There was another new group of friends who loved me and looked forward to seeing me everyday. I was hugged all day long. It was like magic. I had an unfortunate incident with a patient that caused a whole new ally to depression to show up, C-PTSD. GREAT!!! This is a story for a different time.

Depression, you just lapped all of this new thing up. You took it and ran with it. The call outs started again. I was written up again, I was doing all the things I had done before. I was the definition of insanity. I was also heartbroken. I didn't want to stay home. I wanted to be outside in my ambulance with my partner doing the job that I loved. I cried all the time when I was home but it was different this time. It was grieving. I was grieving over my Dad's death, the loss of my first EMS job and those friends and I was already grieving over the job I still had. I knew my Chiefs were being as patient with me as they could based on the incident that was life changing but I had tied their hands. The couldn't look away forever. I felt like I couldn't explain myself and all that was happening in my brain they would know that loser Teresa was in charge. Depression you were playing me like a marionette. I was helplessly dangling at the ends of the strings

One of my Chiefs took me aside one day and asked me what was happening. He told me that I wasn't the same bubbly person that he hired and that I certainly wasn't the person that I was being. The call outs. The rudeness towards others. The inability to even smile or laugh. He flat out asked me about what was going on in my head. Well, depression, you gave it all to him. The heaviness of all the pure sadness that was controlling me. I told him about the crushing, demoralizing ,deep dark hole that I was falling further into each day. I told him everything. He also told me that he thought this is what was going on. He hugged me close and told me that he was going to get me some help and that no one at this place was going to give up on me. My self-esteem had been stripped away by depression and it's new friend PTSD. I had other people on my side this time though. I went to therapy and again started medication. The Psychiatrist, for some reason, decided that it was in my best interest to know that I had to be healthy in three months or my job would be in jeopardy. There was no way this was all going to be resolved in three months so I just gave up. I stopped going to therapy and just waited to be fired.

The final career ending blow and I do mean blow occurred. A patient knocked me out cold. That was the end. I made you happy again Depression, didn't I? I didn't go to work and I didn't call out from work. My Chief reached out to me and tried to get me to talk to him but I was completely undone. The darkness had taken me out of the game for good this time. I just sank into it and isolated myself as much as I could.

This was my final job. I lived with my only companions depression and PTSD. They both hated me and I hated them right back. I wanted to die so bad. I wished someone would kill me. I asked my Dad for help but I knew he wouldn't. I just self-medicated again and it wasn't just to sleep anymore it was to try to stop all the pain. The years of pain all seemed to come back as one monster that wasn't ever going to let me go. I finally came to the conclusion that the only way to end the pain was to do it myself. I called my best friend Linda to tell her, " goodbye and that I loved her." She did what best friends do. She wasn't willing to lose me or to let depression take me from her family. She was willing to lose me to keep me alive. She knew I was going to be mad as hell to be taken to a mental hospital but that's what she did. She called the police and the first aid squad ( that we belonged to). I don't think I ever said than you to you Linda but I do thank you for loving me and for never giving up on me. I don't think I deserve all the never ending devotion, and understanding that you have for me but I don't need to know. I can feel it and no depression will ever take it away again.

I never responded to talk therapy so I made the decision to have ECT. I was determined to do this for my sister who I lived with. We had moved to Nebraska because of the Venus fly Clap that was my sister's friend. She came with Liz, my sister, to my sessions just in case anything happened to me. I had electricity shot into my brain three times a week for three months. It left me feeling sore all over because of the " convulsive" part of the therapy. The minute I came out of my session Liz would give me a pain medication that was prescribed to me for migraines and an anxiety medication also prescribed to me. I slept all day in between sessions.

IN YOUR FACE DEPRESSION! ECT worked. You were nearly obliterated! I haven't felt you like I used to in years. I am now just like everyone else. I get the blues sometimes but it doesn't last. You don't control any part of me anymore. What I mean is, YOU'RE FIRED!!!

This auto-biography has other moving parts as anyone that has every suffered with this disease knows but I've said enough about me. I have a content life. I hope you, the one reading my truth, can take away some facts about my enemy, depression. It's powerful and all consuming. You will do things that you don't want to do and it will only fuel the fire that keeps depression burning. I didn't have complete control of myself . I don't think I was ever a horrible person. I think I did horrible things and I have apologized for them. I was sick and at my absolute worst I had other people trying to help me. They could see more clearly than I could and I wish I had listened to them when they were trying to get me to get some help. Now that you know my truth, if you think I have helped you in anyway to get rid of yours and help you value yourself, if you feel like you'd like to leave me a tip please do so at the bottom of this page. Thank you

I have one last thing to say to you. I don't think you deserve a clinical name that makes you sound all kinds of important. I mean, look at the anal orifice. This natural body opening is actually used as a curse word directed at someone who is being a big, huge jerk. I don't think it deserves to be a word of contempt. Why is being called an asshole an insult? Let's think about this, it's an opening in the anus so calling it an ass hole is crude but not inaccurate. It's also, technically, an exit only that removes waste from the body. The other crude name for this orifice is, " shithole" which is also used as an angry insult. While both of these rude words are technically accurate they are defaming an integral part of a healthy body by removing waste and toxins. .

Depression, you take up residence in the brain. inflicting massive mental hurt and pain that even the worst diarrhea or hardest bowel movement couldn't cause. You, depression are the hemorrhoid of the brain.You flare up whenever you feel like it causing immeasurable pain. You take dignity and self-worth away from decent loving people. I wish I knew why you picked me but I doubt I ever will. You will never control me again, Buh bye!