Depression is a Witch! (warning it's a long one)

My entire life has been spent battling depression. No really. Think about your earliest memory, I'll wait. . .  Was it a happy one? For the majority of you it was, if not then maybe you will see where I am going with this. My earliest memories are not about happy family moments or family trips or school trips and the like. My earliest memory was thinking about how I didn't belong, how I wanted to die, and how God couldn't possible exist because if He did He must have hated me to allow me to be a part of this family.

Now my parents were maybe no more neglectful than any other parent that had three kids and were very, very young parents. Let me be clear here I am not saying young parents are neglectful, all I am saying is that as we mature and grow older we tend to be better parents then oh say a 16 or 17 year old kid. There are always exceptions to that rule, but I digress. Let me just say my parents would have been better parents if they would have waited and had been better educated. Now back to our program, depression. Ah yes my battle! Sooo from a very young age I have always felt like life wasn't worth living that if I were dead some how things would be better for my family, my friends and myself. I would cry every morning while getting ready for school. I was always kind of a loner in elementary school, kids just didn't get me and I didn't get them. It didn't help that I was an undiagnosed ADHD/severely depressed child. I would swing from super happy to super sad for what seemed like no reason at all. This continued on into high school, I don't even want to talk about middle school. Every year I would promise myself, "I will not be the girl who cries all the time. I will not be the girl that can't control herself. I will not let my emotions get the better of me." I would always fail! Epically so. I would remember telling my mom that I just didn't feel right, that something was wrong with me, that I needed help. Her response: "Oh it's just hormones, Oh you're just a teenager you'll be fine," and my personal favorite, "I can't help you before I help myself." Talk about a blow to your self-esteem. That one still stings to this day. It was clear to me from a very young age that I was on my own with this depression.

Being that I was on my own with it I tried to find ways to cope. I had boyfriends, which always ended in disaster even into my adulthood, I tried self medicating, that didn't work, I would make it a point to always be around friends, which worked unless they weren't available. In the end not much helped, but the time I was 16 or so, I really just couldn't deal anymore. The depression had reached a peak or depth, which ever you prefer. I got dumped and cheated on, school was stressful (being expected to maintain straight A's when you are ADHD is very hard with meds imagine without them), My family life was deteriorating and there seemed to be no hope. Get ready ladies and gents you are about to hear something not many people know about me.
              I left my friend's house after finding out I had been cheated on. I went home to my house and found the nearest big bottle of pills (tylenol), I knew I needed alcohol to make it particularly potent but since my parents were not big drinkers they would notice their beers and such going missing. I instead opted for water lots of water. I went down to my room in the basement, sat down next to my big ol' water bed, looked at my plum colored walls, and make shift cream colored carpeting and started taking handfuls of pills. I cried and dumped pills into my hands, took them and repeated. I stopped before I could finish the bottle. I laid down on my bed and went to sleep. I woke up a few hours later vomiting and scared. This was a saturday, I continued to vomit and sleep until monday morning, when I called my mom at work and told her what I had done. Being that she worked for a Doctor she was able to get a clear since of how bad things were. I on the other hand had no idea how bad they were. I just thought I am really sick and not dying, I better tell someone. . .

Obviously, I survived. I was only mere hours from total liver failure and to this day I still cannot take tylenol without feeling sick to my stomach. I got help after that, I was mis-diagnosed Manic-Depressive, got meds, started going to therapy and joined a swim team so I could be active. This all seemed to help up until I had to go back to school in the fall and my parents stopped being as active in helping me manage my meds and doctor appointments. I was young I didn't really know what to do so I just stopped my meds, my therapy, but I kept going to swimming. It was the one relatively "free" thing I could do.

Once my mom completely checked out after I finished high school, I left home. So no insurance, no money, just work and school. I was fine for a while. . . I got married, I got an associates degree and I joined the army. Well here comes depression again. I went into the army, I got hurt, I got depressed, I got out. I came home to an unsupportive husband that couldn't understand why I was always so sad, and why I couldn't just snap out of it. Well, I couldn't snap out of it. I started going back to school, seeing a doctor and was then diagnosed ADHD with Severe Depression. I got on the right meds, I thrived! I ended up getting a divorce soon after that and lost insurance and started down the spiral. I was able to get insurance through my work and soon was back on my meds, dating (never the right guy) and then went to France for a semester. No meds there, I was ok for a while. I came home from France and just didn't know what I was going to do with myself. My boyfriend at the time was never happy with me and I always seemed to be an embarrassment to him. All of this was WAAAY to familiar to my life with my ex- husband, boyfriends etc. I made it through that depression some how, it wasn't easy. I moved to Richmond started a new life and then found the Church and my husband. I also had access to meds but I didn't think I needed them. Something weird about this disease you never think you need meds. You are always doing just fine, and meds don't help anyway according to the monster in you head. Got married, had to leave the singles ward and all my friends. I try to make new ones but it's hard when you feel like you are too much of a weirdo to fit in. Flash forward to over a year and half of trying to make a baby with no success, feeling more and more isolated and alone, watching a family loose it's patriarch and not finding the right meds and you have a disaster.

I am Nicole Nielsen and I am always depressed! Sometimes it's easier to deal with other times it overwhelms me. Nothing helps in those times I am overwhelmed. Not even bacon! I just want to lay in bed all day and sleep. I never feel rested, I never feel like myself, and so far none of the meds I have tried have worked. Depression has no rhyme or reason for me, it just happens. Sometimes I am too busy to let it get the best of me and I can keep going until it lessens, other times I plan out what how Jon can sell things and use my life insurance to pay off some of our debt. The house is automatically paid off the moment one of us dies, so for him no house payment. For me no more sadness. I even thought out who he could marry, he would still be young enough to go back to the singles ward and gosh wouldn't he be a prize?! You know he already likes committing, he has his own home, he is a musician, he is responsible, and he would have that sad widower angle. What isn't to love about that guy! For now I will keep trying to fight the good fight against depression. If you are my friend don't feel like you have to come save me, I will be ok. If I need you I will reach out, I promise. I am not looking for pity, I just wanted to get this out of me. I needed to get this out of me. I couldn't hold it in any longer.

Let the self pity begin. . .

        A friend asked me today if something was wrong. She asked this because I did not respond the way she expected to something she said, also she said that it seemed like I was holding on to something. The only thing I think that is different about me lately is I lack that positive spin on life. I am used to seeing at least one thing that is positive or that there is something positive that will come out of a situation. You know personal growth and blah blah blah. I am far too sensitive to things that others feel I wouldn't or shouldn't be sensitive about and no I am not pregnant! UGH! Life has become this spiral of bad. Jon and I have had finical difficulty for the past few months and Jon said it looks like we might come out ahead this month. My response is yeah that must mean we forgot to pay something or that something bad is about to happen. My response in the past might have been to have been thankful that we have even a little to put into to savings or to pay down a debt. Do not mistake me I am grateful for any extra but I can't shake this feeling that something terrible is about to happen. 

      I feel ganged up on by life. If I decide to do something good for my body it seems that there are people that feel they know better than me just because they are older or read an article in a magazine/online somewhere. If I decide to change my diet because I want to see if it will help me to get pregnant, damn it it's your job to go along with that. You can't possible understand what lengths I will go to if you have not experienced the infertility issues that I am facing. It has been 1 year and 7 months since we decided to have a child and nothing has happened yet. Yes we have tried the ovulation kits, yes we have seen a doctor, no they can't figure it out yet, yes we have done insemination, and no I have not asked for a chemical to boost my egg production yet. I was trying to go a more natural route first see if a little diet change for the better would help. I will try that next but I can't help feeling that we may never have children and I am NOT OK WITH THAT! God's plan or not I am NOT ok with not having children. I am tired of waiting, I am sick to death of hearing it will happen when it's supposed to! If that were true then every freaking teenage girl that gets knocked up is SUPPOSED to be knocked up and it's GOD's plan for that. Seriously?! God thinks that a 16 year old is supposed to get in over her head with a child? It's God's plan for me to suffer so much agony over once again getting my period! It's God's plan to teach me something. . . right? I am supposed to endure to the end right? Well at some point I cannot help but feel like Bruce from the movie Bruce Almighty "Fine! The gloves are off pal! C'mon, lemme see a little wrath! Smite me, O mighty smiter! You're the one who should be fired! The only one around here not doing his job is You! ANSWER ME!!!" I know you get what you ask for right? Well, if that were true then we would have had a little boy by now or any baby for that matter! "God helps those that help themselves," well I say trying to get our act together, going to the doctor and doing our best to make things work counts as us helping ourselves. 

  The final truth is I have lost hope. I have lost hope that life will get better. I have lost hope that we will ever be parents. I have lost hope that we will ever have a better than ok life. I have lost hope that anything great or wonderful will ever happen in my life. I work so hard, as does my husband, but nothing ever seems to get better for us. There are some bright shiny spots in my life, don't get me wrong. I have wonderful friends, family and in-laws, but that doesn't fix what is broken. 

   I know there are people that have it worse off than I do, I truly do know this, but it doesn't help with not having any hope. If anything it only deepens the despair that I feel. I look at this people and think to myself how can this world be like this? How can God let this happen? He is God, he has the power to fix it all in a second, in the blink of an eye. I also think how can I ever feel sorry for myself it's not as bad as their situation. This kind of thinking only makes it worse, because now I am a terrible person for feeling sorry for myself. I wish I could just get over it and suck it up, it would make things so much easier. I just can't! I see injustice and I want to fix it but I can't. How do you find the will to look for that silver lining when everything seems so black? 

   Bottom line life is hard and it has been for me always. I have seen some joy but it has always been crushed by darkness and pain. So I will carry on until I see the light of joy again. I will do so with a smile on my face and an ache in my heart for things hoped for but never given.