So...Here I go...time to share my story, and I am just at the start of trying to figure out how to deal with what happened to me, and how I hit rock bottom.
I am a 40 year old man who seemed to be living a life that many would want. I had a job that paid me 6 figures, a wonderful wife, and a perfect 8 year old son. Not to mention, I am active in the community where I live, and enjoy officiating football. So how can this person who has everything going for them be suffering from Major Depressive Mood Disorder or Clinical Depression? Easily, because it is not something that I really had any control over. Rather it was always there, always hanging over me, and something that I shared with no one.
I was great at hiding my true emotions, my true feelings. Not one person in my life knew the darkness that I felt every single day, from the moment I woke up, to the moment when I tried to go to sleep (usually not very successfully). There was just dread going into everyday, not for anything rational, but just an overwhelming feeling of being a failure, or not being good enough, or that something horrible was always around the corner.
For a while I would set up little goals in my head, "I just want to make it to the weekend." or "Let me just keep going until my son's camping trip this weekend." or "If I can make it trough this week at work, that will be a success." The silly thing was, there was nothing that was stopping me from doing these things other that my own mind. There was no reason I would not be able to make it to the weekend.
Sometimes at work, I would have something happen, like being selected to speak at a conference or something, and that would make be say to my self, "well, at least I won't be fired until after September (or whenever the date was)", but the silly thing was, I was never in position to be fired. It was my own brain and depression making me think things were hopeless.
The worst thing was I would lie about what was happening to me, because I did not want to burden everyone with all of my problems and issues. I did this at home, at work, to my friends, to my parents, to everyone. I just felt like no one would care. I felt like I was never going to be able to be what everyone thought I was, so I need to make everyone think I am what they think I am. But really, all I was doing was slowly heading down a spiraling path that lead me to do something that I thought was unthinkable.
The strange thing is, I never thought that I was depressed, I thought that I was just being normal, I guess because that was my normal for a very, very long time. I thought that setting little goals like, if I can make it to Wed, everything would be ok; but in reality, all I was doing was feeding my depression by keeping in what was the real issue. Procrastinating and putting things off, just made me feel worse and worse about myself, but that is just what I did. I did not think about it, I just did it.
Well, this time, what stared out as a snowball rolling down hill gathered enough snow and overwhelmed me, there was nothing I could see that was good. Everything about what I was doing, and what I had done was just overwhelming, I could only see the dark cloud, and no good light. I don't really even remember the day 3 weeks ago when my depression took over and it was all I could see. All I now know, is that it was a blessing, a blessing that made me see I had a mental disorder, but one that I can work to control, through hard work, medication, treatment, and plans.
I can get back to being the person who I am, a good person, a person who has a lot to live for, and a person who can fight against the depression, the darkness that almost took over, but fortunately did not.
