When Enough is Too Much

OK.  I'm going to put it out there and say that I'm not as good as I pretend to be.  I'm a fraud.  All this time I've been acting like a warrior when I'm really feeling like a prisoner of war.  My battle to cope with what life dealt me was lost a long time ago.  It's funny how easily we can continue to get through life's obstacles when it involves the life of someone else, but when it involves only ourselves, the course starts to conquer us a lot more easily.  My façade has been cracking under the pressure for quite some time now.  I'm always trying to be the good mother, wife, sister, friend, neighbor.  Yeah, I'm more limited than the average person but I never let that define my capabilities.  In fact, I had to be even better to show that I'm just as good.  Every time I plastered a smile onto my face I was sobbing inside.

I don't want anyone who reads this or who knows me personally to think that the reason for my depression is due to any of my personal relationships.  After being diagnosed with MDD (Major Depressive Disorder) nine or ten years ago and going to many counseling sessions, I can say that I started dealing with this mental illness around nine years old.  Everyone thought that I was just melancholy and moody with a bad temper.  Turns out I was clinically depressed and I dealt with that in anger.  So, for a big chunk out of my life I was feeling things that I couldn't really understand or thought were abnormal.  I couldn't control my rage a lot of times and I now see those as times of depression.  I hated (still do) being sad and feeling out of control of my emotions, which is why I became angry so quickly.  I am a true Cancer - tough as nails on the outside but a mushy mess of emotions on the inside.  I'm very protective of my feelings and I hate it when they get hurt.

That defense mechanism worked well for me for a long time when that was all I saw it as.  I think I coped better before knowing I was clinically depressed.  That diagnosis breaks your perception of yourself.  I thought I was strong in every sense of the word but being depressed meant that I officially had moments of weakness and being irrational.  I didn't like that.  I still don't.  Yet, I tried to still be who I thought I should be for everyone else in my life that I cared about.  I depleted the very essence of myself in order to keep a smile on the faces of my family because they were better for it in the end.  In my gut I knew that I needed to express how tired and sad I felt but that would just be an inconvenience.  And I didn't want anyone making me feel like I'm weak or crazy, therefore, I tucked it away and pushed on and put my happy face on.

As the years wore on the ability to keep that charade going got more and more tedious and harder to sell.  And thanks to that wonderful nurse manager in the PCU at Long Island Jewish who spoke about me to the nurse assistant as if I weren't in the room after my suicide attempt, I became dead set on never being that vulnerable or made to feel like I needed a straight jacket ever again.  So, behind closed doors, I fought the depression monster for days at a time, barely making it out alive on some occasions.  I could have benefited from the rest and possible medication tweaking that an inpatient stay would provide, but I was afraid of the stigma of being called crazy or weak.  Learning how to cope with pain at such a young age wound up being a disadvantage because I cope through pain unnecessarily and without help.

Right now, I am saying that I'm tired.  I don't want to nor desire to battle it out with my illness.  I've been going non-stop for over twenty years and I ran out of steam years ago; going on fumes that really haven't gotten me anywhere.  I always give my psychiatrist and counselor the impression that I'm a little better than I really am; more so because I want to believe that I am.  I just wish that I didn't have that fear of being called crazy.  But what's the purpose of writing about it now?  I want everyone to know that my daily life is very hard.  I can barely find things about myself or life that makes me happy.  I am angry every day because I'm so depressed.  I am depressed because I have to struggle so much.  I struggle with having to fight chronic pain for the rest of my life.

I've kept all of this to myself because I'm protecting those I love from having to know or witness my depression.  I never truly benefit from doing this and at this point I can't anymore.  I am extremely depressed - for being disabled by pain; being a burden; feeling guilty; feeling inadequate.  For being stuck with three invisible illnesses that all bring their own stigmas to the table.  That's nothing to be cheering about.  It sucks and nothing about it is easy.  I have more bad days than good.  My good day this week?  Making a slamming raspberry green iced tea.  I felt good about that and only that.  The rest is a blurred cacophony of emotions.  Everything became way too much a long time ago.  Enough is enough.