Day 37: Modern Medicine

I didn’t have the smoothest of childhoods. I was blessed compared to so many, but emotionally I was in hell. I had no self esteem, no confidence, and no one telling me I was good enough. Naturally, I cried a lot. I withdrew into myself and hid. It was how I chose to cope, and it wasn’t long before my mother decided I had depression. I used to get so angry when I’d hear her tell people I used to hide in my closet, “such a dark child.” In reality, I would go inside my closet to cry. My mother got angry when she’d see me crying after I’d gotten yelled at for something. So rather than get yelled out for having the nerve to cry, I’d go where she couldn’t see me. Guess that kinda backfired on me, haha.

I was depressed, for a very long time. There came a day around the time I was a senior in high school, when I stepped into the shower, and broke down. I sat on the floor of the tub and bawled. I just was so miserable. I wasn’t suicidal by any means. I didn’t want to die, I just wanted to be happy. When I was done crying, I went into my mother’s room and told her I wanted to go see someone about getting on depression medication, something she’d been trying to convince me to do my whole life.

I was prescribed Wellbutrin, and I felt a drastic change within a matter of weeks. I was ashamed at first about admitting I needed help, but the doctor explained to me that it’s a chemical imbalance in the brain, the areas that fire off chemicals and signals and all that to each other weren’t sending out what they were supposed to, and stress or sadness really showcased this because those emotions trigger these certain areas in your brain. The Wellbutrin acted as a traffic cop, he explained, making sure “traffic” through my brain flowed the way it was supposed to.

I started to feel like the me that I was when nothing was wrong ALL the time, and that was so amazing. It didn’t stop things from making me mad or sad, but it stopped me from feeling so hopeless about it. It’s difficult to explain, because nothing in my life changed: all the stress and bad stuff was still there like before. But I felt different inside about everything. I wasn’t staying awake at night crying myself to sleep. I just slept.

I’ve encountered many people out there that don’t believe in conditions like depression, manic depression, etc. There are just some things you can’t change people’s minds on. I know what my experience was, and I know the medicine made a difference. I was able to get weaned off of it with my doctor’s permission, and I ended up going back on for a brief time not long after I started at Sewell. I’ve been off of all meds for several years now, and I feel better than ever. I have confidence and self esteem that I never had before. I am so glad I made the decision to do what I thought was something I should be ashamed of. It’s not something I am ashamed of anymore. It was one of the best decisions I ever made.