Finding Hope2022 in Review
Posted on December 31, 2022
TW: Mentions of depression and suicidal thoughts.
This may be the hardest post I’ve ever tried to write. I did seriously consider abandoning it but something in me kept me from doing that; I don’t know what or why. Everything I feel at the moment, and for the last year, (even when I’m feeling nothing) is so overwhelming that it’s very hard to see straight, to think straight. But I do know, without a shred of doubt, that this has been the worst year of my life, my depression as devastating as a drought. It sounds dramatic but the metaphor feels accurate. It’s hard to write about but, for some reason, I’m still trying. Here’s my best attempt to sum up 2022.
In the past, I’ve separated the year into chapters of sorts but that’s hard to do with this year. For the first half of the year, I was on medication (first ADHD meds – which fucked up my relationships with food and sleep in a way that I’m still struggling with – and then antidepressants) but I was so depressed and suicidal that I had to come off them. But things haven’t improved since then. I’m still depressed and consistently suicidal, overwhelmed by anxiety; it’s beyond miserable. (This is partly why I dislike – and therefore haven’t been – writing about it, because I just feel like I’m complaining, even when I’m simply stating facts.) On the worst days, I feel like there is no joy to be found in the world, and on the best days, the joy to be found can’t possibly outweigh the bad. And there’s just so much bad. I miss feeling safe. I feel like, somewhere along the way, something in me was irreparably broken and there’s no coming back from that, not properly. I miss who I used to be. I miss who I thought I would be. And I’m just so tired: tired of feeling this way, tired of trying so hard, tired of not knowing what to do, tired of tearing open my chest multiple times a week at therapy and feeling like I’m only making things worse. Like they’ll never get better. Like there’s no point trying to get better because there’s nothing worth getting better for. I feel like as deep as I reach for the words to describe how I feel, they’re never enough; that agony that comes with feeling like the world is just too difficult and painful to live in, I’m not sure that that’s something you can truly understand if you haven’t experienced it. I’m not sure you can understand it unless you’re in it, and maybe not even then. This year has been a war, and one I didn’t sign up for.
Looking back through my photos, I can see that, objectively speaking, good things did happen: I got to spend time with people I love, I saw beautiful art and music, I cuddled with my cats…
I don’t want to diminish those moments but they very much feel like the odd, precarious stepping stones across an ocean (I know, my metaphors are all over the place in this post). They were good things but they were fighting to be heard through all the noise of the bad. It’s like what I said in my Grateful post this year: I can know that they were good even if I can’t feel them in a way I could eighteen months ago. And it’s hard and messy because the good also reminds me of the bad, of the feeling broken, of the things that feel impossible, of the ever-present presence that is my depression. It’s also hard to talk about – the good things existing amongst the suicidal thoughts – because for each understanding response, there are so many negative, judgemental ones.
I don’t know what tomorrow brings. I don’t know what I want it to. I didn’t want this year. I didn’t expect to still be here and I’m not happy or pleased or grateful for that. I feel pathetic and stupid and cowardly; I feel broken beyond repair. I feel frozen, overwhelmed by all of these big feelings. If feelings could kill you, I think these would have.
I really have no idea if I’ve managed to accurately capture my feelings about this year; all of these feelings are so big and overwhelming that it’s hard to really know anything. It’s like trying to find your way home in a blizzard. I don’t have a neat and tidy end to this post either. This is just how things are.
Grateful 2022
Posted on December 24, 2022
TW: Mentions of depression and suicidal thoughts.
I think it’s safe to say that this has been the worst year of my life. I’ve been so depressed and suicidal and that has just swallowed up the whole year. And feeling like that, it’s hard to access gratitude, even when you know that there are things to be grateful for. So I’m trying, according to my yearly tradition, to focus on the things that I know I’m grateful for, even if I can’t always feel it properly.
My Mum – What can I say, my Mum is amazing. So much of this year has been so awful and she’s been with me through all of it; she’s never given up, even when I kind of wish she would. She has been my champion. She’s the best and I honestly don’t know what I did to deserve her.
My family – I’m not sure what more I can say about my family, about how great they are. I have not been easy and my issues have taken up a lot of energy and yet, they have been there for me, supporting me in whatever way I needed at the time without judgement. There are so many different things I could write about, moments I could mention, but the most important thing to say is that I love them, more than I could possibly express.
The friends who’ve supported me – I am grateful for all of my friends but I wanted to give a special shout out to the friends who’ve been especially supportive over this last year. I’ve felt very alone and when friends reached out to me, it meant (and means) a lot. They didn’t necessarily do anything (although a few friends gave me gifts this year that I feel utterly undeserving of but am deeply grateful for nonetheless) but they sat with me in it, whether that meant actually talking about it all or watching TV together.
New friends – Despite the fact that I haven’t been out much this year, I have actually made some new friends this year, which has been nice. The pandemic hasn’t exactly been conducive to meeting new people and neither has my depression but the new friends that I have made, especially the ones that I have some quite heavy stuff in common with, have been a gift.
The connections that survived the pandemic – There were friends and acquaintances that I didn’t see for a long time because of the pandemic, several of those in Nashville for example, that I worried wouldn’t be the same after so long. Part of that is just my relentless anxiety that maybe no one actually likes me but part of that is also that everyone has a life, has their own stuff, and went through a trauma with the pandemic; I wasn’t sure if some of my relationships would survive all of that and I wouldn’t have held it against them if they hadn’t. But to my surprise and delight, many of these connections did survive the pandemic and even managed to grow over the year.
The cats – I don’t know what I’d do without my gorgeous cats; I really don’t. They’re adorable, they’re snuggly, they’re funny, they’re comforting… The list goes on. I feel very lucky to have them; there’s always one around to cuddle up with or make me smile. Lucy ushers me to bed when I stay up too late and keeps watch until she’s sure I won’t get up again. Tiger headbutts me until I stroke her and then she purrs like I’ve bestowed the greatest honour upon her. Mouse is slowly becoming more affectionate, having always been less sociable than her mother and her sibling, and has started seeking us out for strokes and cuddles. Sooty gets obviously impatient if I don’t make space for her on the sofa and then instantly settles down, stretched out and pressed up against me. Sweep appears and flops dramatically on top of her mother, like they’ve been separated for weeks (and, bless her, still struggles with the cat flap occasionally despite it having been there her whole life). They’re all the sweetest of little souls and I love them dearly.
Finding a private pool for hydrotherapy – It took many months and several attempts but we finally found a private pool that was a good fit for me to do my hydrotherapy exercises. Many of the preceding ‘failures’ didn’t allow me to do certain exercises or required travelling a fairly significant distance, so I am very pleased to have found such a gorgeous pool that has everything I need almost on my doorstep (plus the owners are lovely and their passion for decorating the pool for each holiday always makes me smile). When my routine is running smoothly, I manage to get there three times a week, which is great; sometimes it’s less than that but such is life. I’m doing my best here.
The fictional worlds I can escape into – One of my main coping mechanisms this year has been watching TV shows, old favourites mostly, and reading fanfiction and escaping into those familiar, comforting worlds. They’ve been both an escape and a relaxation technique. They give my thoughts somewhere safe to go when everything else, inside my brain and out in the world, doesn’t feel safe, when all of that stuff feels like a terrifying minefield. I’m grateful to have these worlds to lose myself in, even if only for a while.
When I feel like this, like I’m drowning in my depression with these near constant suicidal thoughts, things to be grateful for feel like a double edged sword. Sometimes they’re things that make me feel like I can keep hanging on, even if just for a little bit longer, and sometimes they feel like weights tied to my ankles, keeping me here when I desperately don’t want to be and I have to admit I resent them for that. So it’s anything but simple. It’s good and bad and hard and confusing; I can feel differently, ten different times in a day sometimes. But these are the objectively good things in my life and I can recognise that. I wanted to honour them for that.
Trying Tranylcypromine
Posted on August 6, 2022
TW: Mentions of suicidal thoughts and negative thoughts about food.
Back in May and June of this year, I tried another MAOI antidepressant, Tranylcypromine; it actually works a bit differently to the other MAOIs I’ve tried, like Phenelzine and Moclobemide, so I was hopeful that it would be the best of those and maybe even more. This one was a tricky one to get because it’s so expensive (a month’s supply is £300 – everyone I’ve talked to about it has asked if it’s made of gold, which made me laugh because that was my exact reaction) but fortunately, I have a great psychiatrist and a great GP who made it possible. I wasn’t in a great place but I was cautiously optimistic that this one would be better.
As is always the case with posts about medication, this is just my experience. Please don’t start, change, or stop taking any medications without the advice and support of a medical professional.
WEEK 1 (10mg Once Daily)
I was still struggling to sleep, not getting to sleep until after three in the morning, and then I’d sleep into the afternoons. I struggled to get up (probably due to both physical tiredness and my bad headspace) and doing pretty much anything – my week involved a stressful dentist appointment, multiple swims and hydro sessions, a meltdown, and more – had me falling asleep on the sofa as soon as I got home. And I was tired and sleepy all day, regardless of the hour.
I was very nauseous all the time and when I actually managed food, it wasn’t satisfying at all. So eating was tough.
The depression was solid, like it was darkening the edges of my vision at all times. I was also very anxious most days and I was really struggling with my concentration.
The chronic pain that had flared up wasn’t great but it was getting better. It was less than it had been and for that I was grateful.
WEEK 2
My sleep continued to be a struggle. During the day, I was tired and sleepy (and fell asleep on the sofa several times despite how wonky my sleep schedule was) but then I just couldn’t sleep at night. My brain kept going to scary places and nothing that’s helped in the past worked. I usually fell asleep sometime between three and five am and then I’d struggle awake in the early afternoon. I couldn’t shift it, no matter how hard I tried or what I did.
I was too depressed to do anything. I was completely paralysed by it. I was depressed and anxious and restless. I was struggling to concentrate. I felt overwhelmed and lost and hopeless. I was having suicidal thoughts again. I was desperate to distract myself from my thoughts. I nearly had another meltdown. I felt like something vital in me had been broken. I still do.
WEEK 3
Sleep remained the bane of my existence. I wasn’t getting to sleep until around five in the morning and one night I didn’t sleep at all (that was a particularly miserable day). I’d manage to wake up around three or so but feel sleepy straight away. And I was tired all day everyday but then I’d go to bed and just lie there, so anxious that my chest felt tight, so anxious that I couldn’t breathe; I just couldn’t calm my brain down.
I was still very depressed. Nothing helped, nothing made me less depressed, or made me feel better. It was so bad that I just couldn’t engage with anything; I felt trapped with my thoughts and it was horrible. And feeling like that, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I just felt like crying and screaming. I was also really anxious. And I just felt hopeless, my suicidal thoughts a consistent buzz in the background. My OCD also became more difficult to manage; the compulsions felt even more suffocating than usual.
Food was also really stressing me out. I wasn’t enjoying it and it doesn’t seem to give me any energy, which – in my head – meant that I was just gaining weight and the thought of that made me very anxious. I’ve never talked to anyone about my anxieties around food and body image because it always feels like there are more pressing problems. Sometimes it’s easy to ignore and sometimes it’s all I can think about and this was the latter.
WEEK 4 (+ Zolpidem)
After so much disrupted sleep, my GP prescribed me Zolpidem to hopefully get a handle on it. As a result, my sleep cycle became very erratic: some nights I barely slept at all, some nights I slept for more than thirteen hours, some nights I slept at a normal time, some nights it made no sense at all. But regardless of that, I was still tired and drained and sleepy during the day.
I was still feeling awful. I was depressed and anxious with almost constant suicidal thoughts. I felt useless and pathetic and I couldn’t stop crying. I just completely overwhelmed and utterly hopeless. Even the most basic engagement with the world was excruciating but hiding away hurt too. I ended up retreating from everyone, both in real life and over social media. As I said, I just felt completely overwhelmed and paralysed.
After a rough session with my psychiatrist, I came off the Tranylcypromine. That was fairly easy, all things considered, and I did feel better. Well, ‘less terrible’ is probably more accurate: I was less sleepy, which made things easier, and I had periods where it all felt a little less oppressive. I also got better at blocking the world out, although I’m not sure that’s done me in favours long term.
As far as my psychiatrist is concerned, my options now are to either start taking Phenelzine again – the one antidepressant that has helped – or to look at other options. My anxiety around going back to Phenelzine is that I will just end up here again, when the side effects become too much to handle. So it feels like searching for another option is inevitable (but then I’m scared that another option won’t work and I should just accept what the Phenelzine can do but… And round and round we go). I have been referred to the Treatment Resistant Depression clinic (something I had no idea existed) to discuss what those other options are and we are also talking to a private clinic, trying to get as much information as possible. But, as hard as I try, I don’t know what to do next. I don’t know what the right choice is and no one else seems to know either.
