The 3 Weeks When My Depression Nearly Swallowed Me Whole

The past few weeks have undoubtedly been some of the hardest of my life. I have faced battle after battle and it has been exhausting, to the point where I felt all the progress I have made had been stripped away completely. 

There is still such an enormous lack of understanding around depression. I felt the darkness encompassing me like I have not felt in such a long time. I was waging a war on two fronts; my post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression crashed into one another and my life became unmanageable. I had the all-too-familiar battles of still trying to find a psychiatrist and when I did, it was a complete disaster. 

I felt desperate; no one understood how bad I was feeling and to be told in an off-handed way that I was “treatment-resistant” by a psychiatrist that I had waited weeks to see was nothing short of devastating. I felt helpless and hopeless, and my mind went to a dark place and stayed there. One of my biggest passions is writing, and I would sit in front of the computer and just stare at a blank screen, not able to put how I was feeling into words — in fact, not able to put anything into words at all. I was totally debilitated.

The only hope I had is that I would wake up the next day and feel just a little bit better, but it just wasn’t happening.

For such a common mental health condition, there is still so much flippancy in the medical community about how to treat it. I had indicated the thoughts I was having and that I was scared, and my doctor barely flinched at the information. Instead of getting the help I needed by talking to someone, she wrote me a script for a higher dose of antidepressants. I have struggled with my mental health for many years, so falling into this dark hole was a dangerous time for me. I couldn’t see the point in trying anymore if it all led to me crying uncontrollably on my sofa. I felt alone and dejected and couldn’t rid myself of the whole-body feeling of the darkness surrounding me.

I knew I needed to keep going, to take one day at a time and I knew I was in this battle alone. I tried to sleep as much as I could to make the days shorter, anything to make it to the next one. I couldn’t shower, I wasn’t eating, but I didn’t care. At the end of the second week, I forced myself into the shower. The water felt like it was washing some of the darkness away. I had achieved something. Like wading through a pool of mud, I kept going, wanting to give in but determined not to. 

It took a full three weeks of this before one morning I woke up and things didn’t hurt so much. I could breathe again and I didn’t wake up crying. 

Depression is a sinister illness and to try and explain to people how bad you can actually feel can seem impossible, which in turn makes it very isolating. I have come through the other side but there are lingering effects from experiencing such deep emotional wounds. As difficult as it is, I still think trying to talk to a therapist or loved one is so important. Suffering in silence can be extremely dangerous and debilitating.

So I am back in the light and starting to do the few things that I enjoy. Depression is always with me, like a silent partner, but I choose not to give it the energy it craves.