It was such an extreme day, that I will always remember it. The physical feeling was so intense. Christ , Is this what they mean by Depression.- I remember, later on I tried to put it into words, the feeling I had.
“Imagine your driving in your car and its typical hot summers day, The car has no ac so its hot. The heat is on you. Suddenly you look up and instinctively you brake, your heart is your mouth and fear is on you. You think your going to run into the rear end of the car in front.”
This is how the pain of depression felt at the time. It felt this way a lot On that day, I was in the shower. No one was at home. The pain was terrific. I thought of something and then for the next 10 minutes, the pain got so terrible that, I dropped to the floor and I crawled to phone, desperate for help. I was confused. Maybe I wasnt deling with an emotional situation that had developed, very well. But why would emotional situation cause this pain- I didnt know the answer.
I ended up going to a support group that day for people with emotional problems. They talked about guilt and joined hands and told me that the process of healing could take five years. I had nothing to be guilty about and the thought of another 5 days of this, let alone five years was too horrible to think of.
I went home and lastly in feeble attempt to numb the pain, I reached for the rum. I drank it straight. It burned and tasted awful. I was sick on the carpet.
The vile smell never seemed to come out of the carpet. It was ruined. Thats how depression felt for me back then. I felt this way a lot. It was awful. It certainly was not feeling a bit low, it was extreme, the pain was seering. I use to throw up once a week or sometimes even twice a week. I dropped to 49.5kgs. I now look back on that and see that I was going through something just so horrid it was unbeleivable.
I had my second large Kidney Stone at the time and we all know they are painful. Depression was worse. (The stone caused pain in my front, just under my stomach, so I knew, the agony in my head was not from the stone). The physical pain was bad enough, but you know how people are, they are anti – anti depressants.
I had a pharmasict friend. He felt that I shouldn’t be on medication. My other friend told me that his relative who was in her first year at Uni had said that antidepressants don’t cure depression.
With all this confusion and ‘advice’ and crippling pain, for some reason I stayed with doctors orders. I stayed with the Prozac.
By June that year this pain had dulled down and was passing. God thank goodness for Prozac. Oh yes that sinister 90’s tablet, taken by the media as some kind of silly pick me up for anxious real estate agents and the like. I think it was a good drug, I’d recommend it. Im not trying to plug Eli Lilly but if I had kept feeling that way, there would have been no option.
Dont you think people who commit suicide are not in some gone of agony when they do it- It may not be the agony I describe here, but it must be agony as well. It is difficult to get into words.
