Anyone here deal with depression? I have, apparently for a long time. It wasn't always so obvious to me when I was younger.
Being depressed has been something that I have been dealing with as a child. After I first got prescribed medicine to treat my depression, I stopped by my grandfathers and told him about me finally getting some help. He told me that he had thought that I should have done it years and years ago, and was actually telling my parents that I need to get into a doctor to get diagnosed or helped or something. My grandparents just knew I was off.
My mom said that it started when I was around 6 or 7. I didn't laugh as much, and when I did I didn't put the emphasis and feeling that I normally did. I guess kids go through a change when they are that age, so my parents didn't think too much of it.
But I do recall (and I hadn't even thought about this being one of the early symptoms until it was pointed out) laying in bed when I was 7-10, having to call my mom in to talk to me late at night because I couldn't stop thinking about death. Not in a creepy way. We had a lot of pets and sometimes they didn't make it, my parents didn't keep it a secret. So I was pretty versed in what death was and the permanence of it. So I figured that if cats and dogs died, people died and eventually everyone I loved will die. Not really something 7-10 year old should be thinking about before bed.
Around this age, my grandma got cancer. I had spent nearly half of my time at my grandparents house. They had cable and all we had was basic, but more importantly they babysat for my parents while they worked. We were really close, I'm not 100% but I'm pretty sure I was her favorite grandkid. So of course, I know what cancer is, I don't know all the fancy medical lingo they used but I got the jist of it. My worst fear came true. I had spent nights dreading this thing, and it was happening.
When I was in 2nd-5th grade, I went to a Christian private school. I hated every second of it. It turned me off of religion completely. I also got bullied a lot. It was during the pokemon craze and I was a fat kid so everyone in my class would call me jigglypuff. Looking back it was stupid to let it get to me, and I should have been getting mad about them not calling me snorlax, you know, the actual fat pokemon.
After 5th grade I begged my mom to take me out of the private school, and thankfully, my ironic prayers were answered. I moved to a public school in 6th grade and loved immediately flourished. New faces, new people, no uniform. It was great. I made friends quickly and easily and even some enemies. Got some stuff stolen and learned a great deal about the differences in public versus private. Didn’t matter though, learning some tough lessons was better than the berating of my old schoolmates and the faculty that couldn’t give two shits.
Anyways, my grandma died about a year or two after being diagnosed when I was in 6th grade.. I just kinda closed up about the whole thing. My family went to therapy and I just kinda gave the answers they wanted. My mom cried a lot. My brother wept all the time. They eventually stopped and starting accepting it so they could move on. I think I screwed myself there by not letting myself open up. This method of dealing with stuff in my life became commonplace. Even now I won’t say how I really feel.
In my teenage years, things weren’t so bad. I had a lot of friends, a lot of independance, and a lot of crazy ideas. I didn’t do great in school but I didn’t do terrible. I always prided myself on being a C student. I also found something that I loved when I was started middle school: Computers. It was 2002 and I had my very own computer. I saved up 300 bucks and took my family to circuit city to buy it. Though I originally bought the computer to play starcraft with my best friend, I quickly realized that these machines were amazing, you can make them do what you want! I was on AIM all the time, sending messages to girls after school, after painstakingly working up the courage to ask what her screen name was.
I continued through middle school working up my own sort of popularity. I wasn’t the guy everyone was talking about, but everyone knew me. I wasn’t as depressed as I had been earlier. Especially since my grandma died and we were all finally kind of… relieved. I was still sad but looking back now, I remember the feeling of a weight just being lifted. So the next few years were great. High school was even a blast. I know some kids hate it, but for being a computer nerd, I got around. At this point in my life, my depression manifested as a toxicity towards people. I got away with it, though.
After high school, around 18-21, I got a job and started going to parties. I went to raves, did all the drugs. Me and my best friend would just go down to the hookah bar on any night, pop a couple pills and make a couple new friends. Things were looking awesome at that time. I didn’t realize at the time that all the drugs and ESPECIALLY the ecstasy was just putting my brain farther and farther into a hole that I wouldn’t realize it was in until a couple years later. These years I would say I put my depression the most at my wayside.
When I was 21 I crashed my car, very dumb of me. I was drinking and driving in a parking lot and crashed into a couple other cars. I didn’t have insurance at the time(I don’t think it would have mattered too much either way). I ended up with about 10k USD in debt After that, I could no longer ignore my depression. My freedom was ripped away from me, in the form of my transportation. Instead of getting a job and dealing with it like I should have, I sunk away.
I sat in my room at my parents house until I was 22. Smoking weed and cigarettes, playing league of legends on a computer I had put together myself with spare parts. I held a few odd jobs but nothing that was permanent or would give me the means to absolve my debt. I should mention this is the deepest my depression has ever sent me. After the drugs and the fun and the parties and friends, they had all disappeared. I still had a couple good friends but for the most part I kept to myself. Occasionally getting drunk with people, but more often I would get drunk by myself.
When I was 23, my grandpa (we talked about his wife earlier) wasn’t taking the best care of himself. He was 74 years old, stubborn, and never took his meds. He didn’t answer his phone for a couple hours so my parents went to his house to check up on him. They found him on the ground covered in his own shit, trying to yell loud enough to get his neighbor's attention. They didn’t want to leave him alone that night because he was being a bit.. Strange, so they left me there to keep an eye on him. I told my mother that she should take him to the hospital or call and ambulance. She said he wouldn’t go. I told her that he shouldn’t have a choice. Lo and behold, after I was there for no more than an hour, my grandpa just becomes completely unresponsive. I freak out and call 911. This is the first time I have ever had to do it and I am completely unsure as to whether this is the situation to be using up their time. My grandpa comes to while I’m no on the phone with the operator and tells me I shouldn’t have called. Yeah right!
It turns out, it was exactly the situation I should use 911 for. He got to the hospital and we all waited in the lobby for a while to hear about what would happen. Turns out, if I hadn’t got him into the hospital, he would have died that night. Wow! Everyone was thanking me and telling me how awesome it was, when really it was a no brainer. The whole thing took its toll on me, especially with my enhanced state of anxiety.
I started staying with my grandpa after that. Let me tell you, I have never felt that… not depressed. I felt needed. Something I didn’t really feel at home, since they didn’t quite get I was depressed and only really regarded me with contempt(depression warps your state of mind). I stayed with him for a couple months, hanging with my grandpa like we did when we were kids. Chatting about old stuff, listening to stories, butting in on his Jerry Springer episode to say “that's totally his kid.” I had my computer and I played league on the table in his dining room. I would skype with friends and have a blast.
This didn’t last long. I guess my grandpa prefers solitary life. Instead of talking to me and saying ‘Hey I feel better, I dont need you taking care of me anymore,” He told my mom that I needed to go. When I asked about he just said yup. Alright whatever, back to the hole. This situation in itself made me feel like crap, not to mention losing that thing I was useful for.
So I moved back in with my parents for a couple of months. A couple of days after the new year, my mom gets a call from my grandmother(not the cancer one), apparently my Dad is in the hospital and has been for the last week. He needs someone to go feed his dogs. So I go to his house and it is just destroyed. I hadn’t seen my dad in a couple months and I definitely hadn’t been to his house. It took me and 3 other people a whole week to get this house spotless. I smelled things that no one should have.
It turns out my dad was in the hospital for a 3rd degree burn on his legs from spilling boiling water on them. It got infected and got real bad. He apparently died on the operating table. They kept him for a couple months, and finally released him. He had a bad heart for the longest time but never did anything to take care of it, so the infection just fucked his whole body over since his heart sucked. He was released about a week before his birthday and came home. His dogs were so excited, I have only seen them that excited again after I came back from Washington. My grandma wanted me to stay with him, sort of in the same vein as I stayed with my grandpa. I was psyched! Me and my dad were never really close, as an adult I totally understand and I don’t hold it against him. But he seemed like he wanted to hang out with me, a lot. I think it had something to do with dying on the operating table, honestly, but I wasn’t going to complain.
The next couple of days were dope! We hung out and watched movies all night with surround sound BOOMING at 4am. I cooked him a bunch of healthy food. About 4 days after he was released, he came into the living room where I was on my laptop. He asked me to take him over to the hospital that was down the street because he thought he had a kidney stone. So I take him over there around 10pm and I begged and pleaded with so many different people. I tried telling them that he just got out of the hospital and he has congestive heart blah blah blah. No one really cared, he wasn’t visibly dying. He finally go in at 230 am. I am tired, more emotionally than physically. I actually threw up from all the anxiety in the hospital. We finally get him in there and he tells me I can go home, since I’m not taking this well. I told him I would keep my phone on loud and to call me as soon as he was getting out so I could come pick him up.
The next day comes around, and I get a phone call from my mom. My dad just went code blue, and they are picking me up right then. My dad was dead before I got there. What the fuck man! It felt surreal. Like, my grandpa pulled through and you're dead? He was only 43, and that scares the shit out of me, because we are so alike. This is when the depression got scary. I had a couple of scares where I almost killed myself. Thank god I never went through with it. After about 6 months of living at my new house,I decided to get treated for my depression. I started taking some medicine that make me act really weird and push away a lot of people. I also gained a shitload of weight, and that only made me feel worse.
So that pretty much leads us to right now. I have condensed a lot of this story ( I know its long). I’m taking different meds, and I have been suicide-crisis-free for a while. I still get sad though. I hate that it’s always going to follow me. This story will never have an end.
And that depresses me.
If you made it this far, Thank you very much! If you would like me to elaborate on any events or even know me, just drop a comment.