My brain is trying to kill me. That's really the only way I can explain it.
I don't have anything to be upset about; nice home, great job, loving family, three cars. I'm not even sad.
I just want to die.
Killing myself isn't especially appealing. It would be so hurtful and confusing to my family- whom I dearly love. It would cancel my insurance payouts. It would leave friends and coworkers completely perplexed. It would likely be messy or disturbing for someone to have to clean up.
Pancreatic cancer and ALS sound like horrid ways to leave the world. Being murdered is my worst nightmare and a house fire is out of the questions.
I just want to stop being alive. It's too exhausting: all of the breathing in and out. The thinking and eating and being awake. Nothing brings joy- no thoughts of the future or wishes for good things. Sleep and food and sex and laughter have no appeal or joy. Sleep is sometimes a mild relief but it isn't restful or restorative.
And that is what Major Depression feels like.
Argue with me. Tell me I just need to eat better or pray more or exercise. Tried it. All of it.
I've done the hard work of therapy and all of the adjuvant therapy that exists.
The only thing that makes this feeling go away and makes "normal" feelings come back is a pill. It's not a simple science. There isn't just one magic pill that does it. Sometimes it's a week or two of a single drug. Sometimes it takes six weeks of a combo of three or more. Sometimes whatever works keeps working for years at a time and sometimes it stops working overnight as if a switch has been thrown.
I've thought before that "now that I am eating right and exercising and (praying, working, doing well in school... enter any variable you can think of here) maybe I can stop the drugs and try to do this on my own. I have failed every single time. With or without therapy and exercise and good eating and smiley faces and fairy kisses... I need the pills.
I can no more make this monster go away by living right than a diabetic or a cancer patient can make their illness go away without drugs. I've tried for a lifetime to make that not true- nobody wants to stay out of the pharmacy more than I do. I just can't. Many of the people I know with true depressive illness have found the same thing. Something is missing from the stew. There is a chemical missing in my body and it makes my brain think I want to die.
