I’ve started and deleted this post more times than I can count. Talking about my journey doesn’t feel that hard anymore – but it’s the fear of someone taking my story and putting it on someone else’s journey with depression that gives me pause. 

I don’t want to give a reason for why someone else may have decided to leave this earth or how their experience with depression went / or is going. I don’t want to speak for anyone else who is currently traveling down the dark and lonely road they have found themselves on. 

So I publish this, with a little hesitation and admittedly some fear. However, I think this needs to be talked about. I think we need to hear from people who are suffering so we can better help our loved ones and know how to support them.

So it’s in that spirit that I will pull back the curtain and share a small glimpse of my walk with depression: how it was, how it’s going, and the lessons I’ve learned along the way.

Pre – Diagnosis

Depression, in many ways, can be hard to describe. Everyone feels sadness, hopelessness, and unmotivated at times. You won’t find a person on this planet who hasn’t felt the world on their shoulders, deep fatigue, or a time when they perhaps didn’t want to get out of bed for a few days.

Grief, pain, and sadness – are ALL part of the human experience. This is why knowing that you might be suffering from something more serious can be REALLY complicated.

This is why it took me YEARS to get some help.

Looking back, I’m convinced I’ve had clinical depression for about 5 years, but I had convinced myself that I was just a human living with a lot of life stressors, 4 kids, instability, and then a crippling pandemic. I mean who wasn’t feeling stressed, anxious, sad, and extreme exhaustion?

Certainly,  I wasn’t any different than anyone else. 

The moment I would think about getting help my brain would tell me that I “wasn’t that special.” (As if a mental health diagnosis is somehow special) That my symptoms didn’t qualify as something more severe and that everyone was struggling. Who was I to think my experience was somehow worse than anyone else’s. Could I really be that self-centered? 

My brain was feeding me lies and convincing me that I didn’t deserve help. That I was being overly dramatic. That everyone was struggling. It convinced me that my needs would be a burden and that a therapist or doctor would just tell me I was being overly sensitive (something I have heard from everyone my whole life) and overly dramatic.

So I just kept believing my brain and suffering in silence.

Depression for me has looked like many different things. It’s not a linear journey, which often makes it more confusing. I would go through several periods of time when I felt pretty good and times when I was in a very dark and bad place. I would make irrational decisions, be stuck in a state of heightened emotions, and be unable to think or view things clearly. But I just assumed that because I was having some good periods, I was just feeling moody. 

I think my perception of depression was 100% different than it actually was, at least for me. I assumed depression meant you’d be in the depths of despair ALL the time. That you’d be disheveled and a mess and unable to function in real life. I assumed that there was never laughter or happiness and no joy at any moment. 

And that deep misunderstanding prevented me from getting help sooner and acknowledging what was really going on.

I grew worse over time. What started out as just a little sadness, fatigue and brief moments of hopelessness became something much more sinister and darker. The weight on my chest every morning became heavier. It felt like an all-encompassing darkness that was overtaking my heart. I could almost visually see this blackness weaving its way into my very life force. It felt like little by little it was covering my brain and it was getting harder and harder to shake.

It’s like seeing the sun on my skin but no longer being able to feel its warmth. I was getting 10 hours of sleep a night but waking up feeling like I hadn’t slept in a week. It was feeling love and laughter in one moment and then feeling like I didn’t belong in the next. It was feeling like I had lost all purpose and that my existence didn’t really matter.

As someone who has always been an eternal optimist, who has always seen the silver lining, who could create a life lesson out of a mud pile – the loss of hope, optimism, and purpose, was almost my undoing.

The Diagnosis

In the summer of 2022, after what had already been an incredibly difficult year – I started having thoughts of ending my life. They were small and fleeting but they would pop up often.

I won’t go into detail about what my thoughts were because they can be triggering for anyone reading this post but they would come while I was driving, while in the shower, while standing on something high up, and during other times. I learned the brain is really good at playing out vivid scenarios of how you could escape from the pain that seems too much to bear.

It was after a couple of months of these thoughts that I knew I had to seek help. For the first time, I was actually scared of myself. Scared of the thoughts in my own head and of the darkness that seemed to be infiltrating my very soul.

I had never once questioned “what’s the point of life” and I knew that the second I started that, I was in serious trouble. That was not the Alecia I knew. 

It took about 6 weeks to get into the doctor. In the meantime, I tried other channels to get some help and they all fell through. I couldn’t get responses back, no one would email me or call me in response to my inquiries, couldn’t get prescriptions to go through. I was desperate and scared and was trying everything I could to get help while waiting for my appointment date to come – and help never arrived.

I learned so much about the struggle to get mental health resources in this country. Here I was, a petrified woman living with a brain I no longer recognized and I couldn’t get help. I tried so many places and it was like the door was figuratively and literally shut at every turn. This caused more anxiety and more hopelessness making my desperation so much worse.

I realized that we often think that people just don’t reach out for help, but I realized that many probably do, and help either doesn’t come or is so slow-moving that it’s too late. It’s too excruciating to wait for the help that you so bravely asked for. 

Reaching out for help takes a lot of courage, when you’re not in the right headspace. Your brain is telling you lies the entire time and is convincing you, you don’t need it. Asking for that help is a constant fight with your brain, at a time when you’re so exhausted you can barely function, and when you don’t receive the help it’s a pain and disappointment I can barely describe. You feel like your brain was correct. You don’t actually deserve the help. 

Looking back I’m thankful I had that perspective because I truly understood the struggles for resources on a whole other level. It’s truly NOT as easy as just asking for help. It’s actually a lot more complicated than most of us ever thought. 

Once I did get to the doctor, I was diagnosed with severe depression. I was given an evaluation, and a test and scored 10 points under the highest score you can possibly get landing me with a diagnosis of severe depression. I did two rounds of blood work, and had multiple levels checked, to make sure nothing else was going on inside of my body and everything showed up as normal. 

Medical and hormonal issues were ruled out and so I was prescribed medication to help treat the depression. 

I was admittedly hesitant about taking meds, as I don’t even like to take Tylenol. I’ve always been more sensitive to medication and don’t like how my body reacts and feels on them. The thought that I knew I would likely need medication to help balance my body, almost had me too scared to make an appointment but by the time I actually got to my appointment date, I was in such bad shape I no longer cared about taking the meds. 

Seriously, I was willing to do ÅNYTHING.

Post-Diagnosis

I started the meds the last week of August 2022 and it has been life-changing. I take them at night since they help me sleep and I’m sleeping better than I have for years, wake up without a crushing feeling in my chest and I actually feel alive again.

It’s hard to describe how good I feel because for most people the little things I’m experiencing now are probably just normal things for them, but I feel like a different person.

Nothing is perfect. I still have dark days sometimes, I still feel fatigued and I have to really monitor my emotions, and my thoughts and self-evaluate all the time but it’s NOTHING like it was. 

My zest for creativity is back. I’ve been writing again, painting, coloring, and designing. I’ve been able to flush out ideas that actually feel good and haven’t just rejected them out of the gate because I feel nothing but hopelessness.

I can see the positive in most situations again, although that hopelessness does still come out sometimes – but it’s more of a fleeting emotion or thought rather than something I get trapped in for days at a time.

Along with medication, I am exercising, journaling, meditating, and keeping up with the daily practices that I have been practicing for years. I really believe fully in the power of nutrition, exercise, and spiritual practices and I know they did help me in my journey until I just needed something else. I think coupling those rituals with the meds has completely changed my life.

I feel no shame in taking medication. It is not something I desire to be on my entire life and am hoping I won’t have to take them forever. My doctor is very supportive of taking it month by month and allowing me to decide when I’d like to try getting off of them. I’m so thankful for that level of support and care. He really helped me accept the meds by giving me full control of my journey with them.

There is nothing wrong with needing help in whatever form that comes. I had started therapy, and then could no longer afford the individual sessions so put it on pause for now but that is definitely something else I recommend.

If you can’t afford therapy, I definitely think reading books, journaling, and giving yourself time every single day to write down your thoughts, feelings, and experiences so you can process them is extremely beneficial. There is something therapeutic about getting it on paper and out of my head. Again, this has been beneficial in partnership WITH my meds and other daily practices. 

Depression is a very complex illness and I know everyone’s experience is vastly different. It expresses and manifests itself so differently in people, that it can be so hard to spot. Some of the happiest and most positive people are the ones that are suffering the most because it is how we cope, it’s how we are desperately trying to connect with that part of ourselves we know is still in there. It’s how we deal with the fear of losing that side of ourselves altogether. I know for me I thought that if I could continue to connect with the sunshine inside of me, it would guarantee the dark cloud couldn’t snuff it out. But as we’ve seen so often – sometimes it’s just not enough.

I believe the lesson I have learned the most is that so many people are suffering and you don’t even know it. So many humans are walking around scared to death of their own selves yet have become masters at covering it up, at putting on masks, at playing a role. I truly believe those of us suffering from any sort of mental illness are some of the best actors and actresses around – because if you don’t play a part every single day, it’s likely you won’t survive the day. 

And so I guess, that’s what we all need to understand so we can be more clued into the people we care about. Pay attention to the little things. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, to look for signs, to sniff things out. And if your gut tells you that someone may not be okay – trust that feeling. We are deeply connected to those that we love and most of us will sense when something isn’t right. Don’t brush that feeling off, follow it.

You might just save someone’s life.