May is Mental and Maternal Mental Health Awareness Month… expect a lot of posts from me…

My Biggest Fear…

I have suffered from this horrible mental illness, Depression, for majority of my life.  Twenty-one years out of the thirty-five years I have been on Earth.  That’s a lot.  Thinking about it drains me.  Thinking about each battle, reliving it in my head even for a few seconds exhausts me on all plains, physically, mentally, and emotionally.  As I age and suffer, it takes more energy out of me than the last time.  I survive, stronger in ways, weaker in others.

This last time nearly killed me.  No, no, no suicide attempt.  Shear exhaustion from the anxiety.  New symptom of panic attacks and the fact that Anorexia had basically developed utterly scares me… for the next time.  I’m scared if I suffer a 7th time it will indeed end me and I’ll leave my child motherless and my husband a widower.  It seems as if my symptoms are progressively getting worse with each bout.

This past January, as I lay in the stark naked room of the Behavioral Crisis Center, I had one of the scariest intrusive thoughts of my life.  Facing what I felt was infinite mental pain, I stared at a screw on the lunch tray table.  Emaciated, weak, I thought about what I would do if I could loosen the screw.  I wanted to give myself a Lobotomy with it, push it in and keep twisting.  Eyes flashing all over the room looking for something to act as a screwdriver…

I’m petrified.  “What ifs?” run through my mind.  What if I succumb to Depression’s ugliness for a 7th time?  How bad will I be then? What if there is a screwdriver within reach?  What if it is worse and I succeed at slitting my wrist unlike when I was eighteen?

In a normal state of conciousness, like currently, I would never even consider it but when I’m suffering, when deep into the depths of the ocean of Depression, I am not sane.  I am not me.  I don’t think about how my absence would hurt my child, my husband, my family.  All I can focus on is how to rid my brain of rapid continuous thoughts, to rid my brain of thinking entirely, because if I am not thinking, I’ll be okay.  At least this is what Depressed me believes.

In an attempt to avoid a 7th time, I have agreed with my Primary Care Physician, my Psychiatrist and those at the hospital to remain on my antidepressant indefinitely.  Of course as a worrier by nature, I am horrified at what I may do if it fails me.  If Depression and Anxiety take up residence once again… What I may do since it becomes more powerful, and exhausting each time…