Depression

I am so tired of my mood swings. They are so frustrating and draining. The worst part is that I don’t know if they’re actual mood swings, or if my pretending is making it seem like I’m happy when I’m really not. Today, I was fine, not too happy, but when I got home and was by myself I just started feeling like crap. I don’t know how to explain it or what to do about it. It takes away all my energy and attention so that I just want to sleep and I can’t concentrate on my homework even if I wanted to do it.

Any suggestions or comments?

 

Thanks everyone for the replies.

I started seeing a new therapist on Tuesday. I’ve been to therapists before, but not much got accomplished because I didn’t want to talk about my confusion about my sexuality because I had this strange idea that it would come true if I talked about it. This new therapist knows that I’m gay and knows that I’ve been struggling with that for a while. She also knows that I’m not at a very accepting school.

Today, I stayed home from school because I am getting a cold, and I didn’t feel like being around people very much. When I go to school, I have to pretend to be someone else and it gets hard to do after a while. Today I just needed a break from all the pretending, all the lying, and all the hiding.

I’m not going to try medication for depression. I was depressed last year and when I tried them, I had suicidal thoughts and I’m not going through that again. The worst part about that was that I was afraid that telling someone that I had suicidal thoughts would get me institutionalized and when I tried telling my psychiatrist that I didn’t want to be on meds anymore, he told me that they were good for me. My new therapist knows that I’ve tried meds and that I don’t like them, but I’m not sure that she understands why I don’t like them exactly.

 

I am seeing a therapist, but I'm not sure how much help that will be. Sometimes I wonder if would just be better to be hospitalized for depression, but then I'm afraid that they would drug me and I wouldn't have control of my life even if it was my idea to be hospitalized in the first place. I'm also afraid that they wouldn't let me leave.

The reason I wonder if hospitalization would be best is that I can't deal with everything that is going on. I've held onto the past becuase my dad didn't let me deal with it when it happened, so I'm full of pent up anger and sadness and pain. I can't deal with that when I'm going through life racking up more pain, sadness, and anger that I don't know what to do with. I wish that there was a way to pause my life so that I could get a handle of things and then just get back into living in the present.

The number one sign that I'm really depressed is that I'm falling behind on my school work, I don't care that I'm falling behind in my work, and I may be failing a class and I don't care about that either. The number two sign is that I'm sleeping a lot and I'm always tired. So that is true except for I'm not failing a class; I'm very close and with the way I've not been doing homework, I think that I will soon be failing. This is really frustrating because even when I sucked at everything else and I didn't have athletic ability, and I wasn't attractive and I didn't have many friends, I still was smart and I always got good grades. This is a measure of just how far my life has fallen apart; if my good grades in school were all I had before and I don't have good grades, then what do I have?

Right now I'm home from school because I couldn't deal with the thought of going in and having to hide how I was feeling from everyone. After my mom left for work, I put on Evanescence's The Open Door, sang along to it really badly and just cried and generally just felt like crap. I feel better now that I've had a chance to do that, and I'm not as afraid that I will burst out into hysteric tears in public, but I still don't want to be around people. Most of the people in my school are vicious and would tear me apart if I cried in school so that's why I didn't want to go because I knew I had to cry. I need to be around people who care about me and support me, but I need them to come to me. I can't chance that I go to them and they don't have the time for me, I need them to come to me so I know that they want to help me and I know that they have the time for me. I start skiping a lot of school because I don't think I can deal with all the crap. The days that I do go to school, I either sleep in class, or I don't pay attention, not by choice, but because I can't focus. I sit there staring blankly at the teacher or the blackboard wondering why I'm here and wishing that I could just leave so that I can burst into tears or a screaming fit without everyone watching. Quite often, I hear a depressing song in my head over and over again. Other times I hear lyrics in my head and they are very depressing and I write my own songs. I could be in the middle of the classroom, but I'm isolated and away from everyone else. I'm in my own sphere of hatred, sadness and pain and I get sucked into it and can't divert my attention to anything else. When I'm in school, I'm really just going through the motions, I don't feel like I'm actually learning anything.

Sadly, the thing I want most of all is to have a nice guy my age tell me that I'm not crap, tell me that I'm not ugly, and hold me and tell me that it's going to be fine. I know that isn't going to happen because I'm not out and I dont know anyone who is. I also know that beggars can't be choosers, but that is what I want and maybe even what I need right now.

I think the worst part is that if I don't get my life together, I will fail this school year and I won't be able to get out of here and go to college where I have the option of being out and reinventing myself. If I fail, I will have to stay in high school another year longer and I can't do that, it can't happen. I can't stay in high school any longer, I've already been here too long. In all honesty, the only reason that I haven't just run away from home to escape it all is that I have an amazing best friend who is very helpful and supportive. She would help me if she could, but I'm not sure that she can, and she has her own things to worry about so I don't bring all my stuff to her. I think that the biggest reason that I don't come to her and tell her that my life is screwed up is that I'm afraid that she will leave and I'll be left with nobody. I know that she probably won't leave me, but I have this fear; I seem to have a lot of fears lately.

I don't want to use medication because I've tried it before and it just made me have suicidal thoughts, and unless you know what that's like, then you can't suggest that I try them again. I even tried different antidepressants, hell I've tried all combinations of different anitdepressants, anti-anxiety medication, and sleep aids, and even different doses of different combinations so I think that I've tried enough medications the last time I was depressed. I'm not only afraid that I'll have suicidal thoughts if I try medication again, I'm afraid that I will tell them that I'm having suicidal thoughts and they will just suggest that we change the dosage, or the type of medicine and I will spend more months completely out of it. I know that I'm not myself when I'm depressed, but I'm even more out of it when I'm on medication. I get this numb-like feeling and I feel like I have to cry for days, but the tears won't come.

 

I know what you mean. I know that I should feel stupid just because I'm failing the class and I can't do the work. I don't think that I feel stupid, so much as I'm frustrated because I can't axcess the information; it's how I would imagine someone with Alzheimer’s would feel because they aren't stupid, they just can't use their brains. The thing about feeling like I need to do well in school is that doing well in school is, well was, a stable and concrete thing and depression has taken it away.

 

My parents know that I’m depressed and I’m seeing a therapist for the second time this Thursday. I’m also talking to my school counselor and my friend about how I’m feeling. My best friend knows that the medication made me worse; my mom and therapist just know that it didn’t work for me and that I don’t like medicine as a rule. I hate talking to my mom because I don’t want her worrying. I know that she wants me to be able to talk to her, but when I tell her things, I can see that it hurts her. It hurts her to know that I’m so depressed and there isn’t much that she can do to help me. I already feel helpless, and it’s worse to know that my mom feels helpless when trying to help me.

I wish I didn’t always wait so long to ask someone to help; it would make it easier to help me. I also wouldn’t be feeling this bad and not for this long. It’s getting to the point where it’s tough to get out of bed in the morning knowing that I’m going to be surrounded by people. I feel physically sick just thinking about going to school and all I want to do is curl up in my blanket and sleep. I know that I can’t keep missing days of school, but it’s getting ridiculous to force myself out of bed.

Thanks for all the replies, it’s nice to know that people do care and want to help.

 

I need to be able to talk things out with someone on a daily basis, and I need to sort things out without crap in life getting in the way. I don’t know how I’m going to see my therapist once a week so I don’t think more would work. She’s an hour away so going to see her takes 3 hours out of my schedule and my mom’s(1 hour driving there, 1 hour there, one hour driving back). The problem is that I know that I need to talk to someone more than I’m going to be able to talk to her.

I’m not sure what to do right now, I have all these feelings that I can’t translate into words or actions. I can’t explain the urgency of how I feel, it’s written off as anxiety about coming to school that I need to get over so I can get out of school. I’m pretty sure that anxiety has something to do with it, but it isn’t the only issue; I’m not sure that I can just get over it, I think I’m stuck. My emotions are fleeting, so I can’t fully explain them unless I’m feeling them at the moment that I’m talking to someone, but I usually only let myself feel emotions when I’m alone and I don’t have to trust someone with my vulnerability. There are so many things that I just don’t know, but the one thing I do know is, I need to feel safe when I’m vulnerable and defenseless; I need to be able to trust someone so that I can stop fighting myself and others; I need to stop fighting, but I don’t know how.

 

Last night I was having a really rough night and I was texting my friend telling her how I felt. I told her that I was feeling like crap and I wasn’t sure what to do. I explained to her that I was scared because I felt like I was losing my best friend and I didn’t know what to do. I told her that losing my best friend scares me because I owe her my life; when I got really depressed last year and was on medication, I had suicidal thoughts and my best friend is the only reason I didn’t try going through with it. She told me that she wasn’t surprised and that she could tell that I was really sad, and she was worried and hoped that I didn’t feel like that. I said that I didn’t feel like that now, but I was afraid that my depression would get worse and I would have to deal with suicidal thoughts again.

After that, she called me so we could talk over the phone. I told her that I wanted to tell her something, but I wasn’t sure what she would think and that I trusted that she wouldn’t tell anyone because it could destroy my already broken life. I told her that earlier that day, when she had tried to make me feel more comfortable after talking about ‘girly stuff’ by asking which girl I thought was hot, she made me feel uncomfortable because I didn’t think that any of them were hot and that I really wanted to point to one of the guys so that she knew. She told me that it was fine and that she would lie to people to defend me and keep my secret because she understands how bad it would be for me at school if everyone knew. She told me that she hopes that I get through school this year so that I can go to college and be accepted for who I am; she’s glad that I accept who I am because she knows someone who didn’t accept himself and he got married only to get divorced when he accepted himself, and she doesn’t want me to lie to myself or anyone else. When I told her that I feel really sad and lonely when I see couples together, she said that she felt bad because I see her and her boyfriend, and she knows that it must be hard for me to know that she has a boyfriend and I don’t and can’t yet, not here.

I’m so glad that I talked to her because even through coming out to her and talking about guys, and talking about how depressed I am and suicidal thoughts, she didn’t make me feel awkward or uncomfortable. I’m so glad that I have such a great friend. She told me that I can talk to her any time that I need to and that I can find her in school if I need a friend. She’s determined to help me through the depression, and get through the loneliness and graduate so that I can get to a better place. She made me feel so much better and I’m glad that I can be myself around another person without worrying what they think of me. She made me laugh by saying, “now we can talk about guys”. I’m in a much better place after talking to her and I’m so glad that she stayed on the phone with me until 4am; it really let’s me know that she cares. I hope that the content feeling continues, but I’m worried that the stress of school will change it. For now, I’m fine.

 

Since I last posted, my friend that I came out to told me that she thinks that homosexuality is evil and that the devil tempted me to chose this path, but she doesn’t care because she’s still my friend; interestingly enough, she hasn’t talked to me very much after we had that conversation.

The other thing that happened was that I went to my therapist and she told me that because I didn’t want to try medication, I would have to work on behavioral things to make myself feel better. I told her that I didn’t think that I could make changes in my life the way it is because it is so hectic and I said that I might need a break from school so that I could work on things easier, but she shot that idea down and just told me to work on getting to sleep earlier during my Christmas vacation.

Last night I came to a realization: I can’t do what my therapist expects me to, I can’t just keep my life the way it is and just operate under the assumption that getting to bed earlier is going to ‘cure’ me of this depression. I felt like crap on Christmas eve and Christmas day, obviously there’s something wrong with me that can’t just get fixed by getting more sleep because I’ve been on vacation for a few days so I’ve been getting more sleep lately. I’ve been trying to get my homework done, and get more sleep over the last week, and I haven’t felt any relief; I’ve actually noticed that I’ve been crying more and more. Yesterday, I took a shower and cried while I was in there. Then I got out of the shower and an hour later, I went to my room to read and I cried a little more. Then I was reading and the protagonist was really depressed and it reminded me so much of myself that I just came unglued and curled up in a ball and cried; I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t cry enough, I couldn’t curl up small enough because I was hoping that if I curled up I would feel better and when that didn’t work I just hoped that I could curl up into myself and just disappear into nothingness. I felt so tired and so old, and it felt like weeks had passed since that morning when I had opened presents and felt content. I felt like calling my best friend and telling her that I needed her to come get me because I couldn’t deal with being in an empty bed again, but I felt guilty because it was 2 am, so I didn’t call her.

Needless to say, I’m not going to try going to bed earlier because already, a few nights in a row, I’ve broken down and cried when trying to get to sleep, and I don’t want to go through that again. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do because I’m out of school so I can’t talk to my counselor there, and my therapist is on vacation so I don’t have an appointment with her for a while; I have her number and her email, but I think that it might take my physical presence to fully explain how I’m feeling right now. I just feel like crap, I’m empty, and I feel like a fool because it’s Christmas and I shouldn’t feel this bad, but I do and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. I’m just suffering in silence for now. I’m thinking of asking if I can stay at my friend’s house tonight so that I can have a distraction from feeling so bad, and so that she can be close if I feel really bad, but I don’t know if her parents and mine will agree, or even if I want to be around people because I usually don’t want people to watch me just fall apart.