I haven’t posted in over a month. I
didn’t forget about my blog or give up on it but I was going through a down
period and I needed to focus on me for a little while. I also knew the next
couple of posts I wanted to write were to describe my personal experience of
getting diagnosed and dealing with the effects of depression and it was hard to
work up the courage to tell this story.
In 2010/2011 I went on an exchange to
England for a year. It was the best year of my life! I experienced a new
culture, I met so many amazing people and made some of my best friends, I
travelled all the time. It was perfect. Then I returned home to Canada and
things got hard. I was thrown back into a more strict society with higher
expectations; it was like culture shock in my own country. Friendships had
dwindled over the year as people’s lives continued on without me while I was
gone. It was my last year of university and for the first time ever I found
school work to be a chore. It wasn’t hard, I had just changed. I used to be the
person who identified myself by my grades and focused only on school work, to
the detriment of all other aspects of my life. But now I had experienced a
different way of life, a more relaxed way of life; I felt alive. I wanted to
travel and explore and meet new people and socialize; school just wasn’t as
important as it used to be. But I had gotten straight A’s throughout my past 3
years of university and I knew I’d be very disappointed in myself if I didn’t
get straight A’s in my final year, so as hard as it was to concentrate, I
pushed myself to give it my all. In the end it paid off and on graduation day I
was happy when I received a medal for graduating at the top of my class. It was
worth it. But I was burnt out.
Throughout the year I also diagnosed
myself with Seasonal Affective Disorder. After being in England for a year I
was certainly sun deprived. Then came the cold Canadian winter (which I usually
love because I ski/snowboard/skate/snowshoe) but for the first time, I hated
it. I started sleeping a lot, stopped trekking to the gym, went outside as few
times as possible and eventually started skipping most of my classes (which I
NEVER did before!) I think the lack of sunlight, the endlessly long, cold
winter, and my pure exhaustion from school just did me in. My body gave up, it
didn’t want to try and fight anymore.
After my year abroad I had also gone
through a break up. The break up itself didn’t contribute to my depression, but
there were consequences to that relationship that were now fairly evident. For
3 and a half years my life had revolved around one person and now that he was
gone, I was alone. I had given up most of my hobbies and we had spent all of
our time together so I now realized that I really didn’t have any friends. This
certainly affected my mood – I had no support network, no one to share stories
with, no social life. It was just me. I love having alone time, but when all my
time was spent by myself and I had no one to do anything with it got incredibly
lonely.
In May 2012, right after I finished my
last year of university, I was officially diagnosed with depression. I went on
a dopamine medication and immediately had a bad reaction so my doctor switched
me to a serotonin medication that seemed to have more promise. But despite having just gotten diagnosed with
depression, I still decided to move back to England for law school. In
hindsight, that was probably a bad idea. I loved England, I made more awesome
friends, but being in another country, so far away from my family, at a time
when I was really struggling made things worse. I was fine for the first
semester, the change and the excitement was enough to boost my spirits. But
then second semester came along and I was 100% burnt out. I couldn’t focus on
school; I had no interest in it anymore. The grey, rainy weather in England put
a damper on my already low mood. I had no motivation to do any of the fun
activities I had planned to do, and I barely saw my friends any more. I stopped
going to class, even though I was on a VISA and could get kicked out of the
country for not showing up. I stopped going out with my friends. I didn’t
travel anymore. I didn’t even get dressed or leave the house. It also didn’t
helping that I was dating (and living with) a guy who turned out to have zero
aspirations in life – his negative outlook on life really brought me down. I
decided to break up with my boyfriend, take a leave of absence from law school and
return to Canada. Packing up and getting myself to the airport was an enormous
task for me, I’d say it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life. It
was so hard for me to gather the motivation to actually do something and to
leave the house and catch a train to the airport seemed impossible. I almost
didn’t get up the morning I had to leave because I couldn’t coax myself to get
out of bed and face the day. The only thing that got me moving was knowing that
I was going home and that I could then get into my own bed and not have to move
again for as long as I wanted.
Being home actually made a huge
difference. It was nice to see my family and my dog. It was summer time and I
live on the lake so I could just relax and soak up the sun. I was happy. And I
thought I was cured. I had stopped taking my medication while in England, a few
months before I came home. I found it really wasn’t helping me and I actually
thought it was making me worse. Now that I was home, I was glad I wasn’t on any
meds, I don't like the idea of putting all these unnatural chemicals into my body, I much rather find my own personal, natural ways of healing, so I was happy that
all I needed to cure me was to come home and be with my family in the sun.
So I had dealt with depression
(officially) for just over a year – May 2012 until June 2013. And then I was
fine. I was still struggling to get back into a routine of working and moving
out of my parents’ house, but I was happy. I eventually moved to Toronto in
January 2014 and started working in February. I then got a second job in March
and I loved how busy I was. After so long of doing nothing and being bored of
doing nothing but not having the motivation to do anything else, a full
schedule felt like heaven! Until the end of March, when it all came crashing
down again.
March 2014 – I had been free from
depression for almost 10 months and all of a sudden I felt my world spinning
out of control again. Maybe I was never really completely free from it the
first time. Maybe it was just a false sense of happiness from switching up my
routine. I’m not sure. But I was certain that I was dealing with a relapse.
I missed work one night because I
suffered an awful panic attack and couldn’t stop shaking and crying for hours.
The next day I quit that job. I started struggling to wake up to get to my 9-5
job downtown and I either missed days or came in late. Eventually we worked out
a revised schedule where I worked 11:30-5 instead. That helped for a while, but
as time went on that also became too hard. I wasn’t falling asleep until around
4 or 5am, so waking up in the morning was actually impossible. Even when I
managed to get to work, I couldn’t concentrate and it took forever to get
anything done. I eventually just stopped going to work altogether. I
reluctantly went back on medication (a different kind then the previous 2 I had
tried). It’s working better I think. I also started seeing an acupuncturist
(more on that later) and he really helped me deal with some of my issues. I’m
still struggling with the relapse. But I can definitely say I’m on the rise
again. And this time I’m not going to assume my recovery. I’m going to work
hard and make some serious life changes so I can hopefully eliminate depression
from my life altogether.
I know this post is incredibly long!!
But whether anyone reads this to the end or not, I thought it was important to
tell my background story of how I got to where I am today, if not for anyone
else’s benefit, then at least for my own, as a record of my past and what I’ve
been through. In my next post I will discuss all the feelings and emotions I
have experienced when in my states of depression to give people an
understanding of what I go through, and to help those of you dealing with
depression see that you’re not alone in experiencing these troubling feelings.
