Winter Semester, Freshman Year.

I have so many things I want to talk about.
I've been keeping this mental note in my head about everything that matters to me and why and what I think they mean.
Whenever I decide to write my thoughts down I choose to sleep instead, except these days I have a really hard time sleeping. And now its 2:30am, my stomach is full of greasy Denny's and I am defiantly not going to sleep anytime soon, so here I am.

I want to write about so many things!
About whales, or how I tore up all of our Ensigns so I could make a collage of a Volcano (it didn't end up working), or more stories about the girls I nanny because, lets be real, i'm obsessed with them.

But thats not what I want to say.
Lyndsi told me about this blog today, Hyperbole and a Half.
She has these two posts about Depression. One and Two

Clinical Depression is something that runs in the Women of my family.
In that group I am included, but it took me a really long time to face that.

It all really came forth the winter semester of my freshman year.
That part of my life has now become a joke, literally. I refer to it all the time by saying things like, "listen, that was a really dark/rough/awful time in my life." But I say it with a laugh because I don't know how else to feel about it. I look back at it and kind of scoff because I don't know how I didn't realize I was depressed, or why I wouldn't accept it.

I have few very distinct memories from that time.
I remember sitting in my bathroom and texting Dorian and telling him that I don't feel anything anymore, and all I could relate it to is being in a very deep hole, surrounded by darkness and there was no way for me to get out.
I remember sitting at my kitchen table with CJ and crying because I didn't want to be medicated for how I was feeling, I wanted to figure it out myself. But I never did anything to try and fix it, I just wallowed in it.

My mom would ask me a lot if I was depressed, I would always say no.
Corey would tell me he thought I was depressed and I remember getting SO angry at him because I didn't want people to know, I didn't want to feel weak, but I didn't want to fix it.

That was the weird thing for me about how I was feeling.
I knew I was this way but I didn't want to do anything about it, I had zero motivation.

I skipped school a lot, I rarely got out of bed, showering became even less of a priority, I didn't really sleep, I didn't eat and I watched a lot of Law and Order.  I stopped praying, reading my scriptures never crossed my mind, and I physically went to church but my head and soul weren't there, I went just so the people around me wouldn't worry.

I think I have always been a happy person, I like to laugh, I like to have friends and to know the people around me. I like the sunshine, I LOVE EATING, I hate being by myself.  None of these things mattered to me anymore. I rarely laughed, I HATED being around people, I tried to stay away from the sunshine, and I choose to be by myself all the time.

My Junior year of High School I had Mono.
My mom once told me that Clinical Depression kinda works like my Mono.
The Mono virus will always be in my body and it can attack me again as soon as my immune system gets bad enough.
The chemicals in my brain have always been unbalanced but they weren't able to take a tole on me until something big happened that made them go crazy and 'attack' or 'take over' my body.

I remember breaking up with Dorian and thinking my life was over.
I knew I would love someone else again but that thought seemed so far off in the distance, and I didn't want to love anyone else.
I remember calling him and telling him I needed to talk to him and I couldn't get through three words before I was bawling my eyes out and he couldn't even understand me. I remember hanging up and feeling like my world was crashing down on me. I wouldn't say that was the exact moment I became depressed, but I know that that is what triggered it. When the depression came I didn't realize it and I didn't take it seriously. I thought I was just upset because I was going through a break up and thats what happened. By the time I realized thats what was going on it was totally out of my control.

I told Dorian I couldn't be with him, I told CJ that we couldn't really be around each other. And I stopped feeling.

But lots of things continued to happen that Semester too.
Lyndsi came home from her mission,
Bradley got baptized,
I met Max,
I got a job.

During these few moments in my life I started to feel little bits of emotion.
I was so happy Lyndsi was home, I was so happy to see my family at Bradleys baptism. But both of those plane rides back to Utah were probably some of the worst rides I have ever had.  I didn't want to go back to Utah because I wasn't happy in Utah, all I wanted to was to be by myself but I forced to sit on this plane with many other people. These instances showed me that I really had the ability to feel emotions, but they could also come crashing down just as quick.

I was always happy when I first started hanging out with Max, it was very easy for me to be around him. We were also getting to know each other so I knew I couldn't be some sad, depressed girl. So I told myself I was going to be happy, I put a face on, and eventually I was truly happy. But the second I would leave maxs apartment and get into my car it would hit me. I remember many different times when I would drive down University in the dark and Provo below would be lit up and I could see the outline of the Mountains against the sky. That hill was always so hard for me to drive down, it made me feel so alone.

I worked at Baskin Robbins and people were forced to rely on me. I was okay when I was distracted but the second I left work it was like this feeling was waiting for me right outside the doors. I would clock out, and along with that I would put this weight back on my shoulders until my next shift.

It wasn't until September that I finally decided to do something about it. Lyndsi wrote this post about Depression and it finally made me realize that this was not something that I could keep ignoring.
I went and saw a Doctor in Utah and he wouldn't give me anything, instead he wanted me to talk to someone and read a book about Depression.  I cried, I was angry, I threw away the number of the 'professional' he wanted me to talk to and I can't even remember the title of the book. I think this method could work for some people, but I knew sitting down and talking to someone about being depressed wasn't going to make me any less depressed.  So I went home to North Carolina and saw my family Doctor and he prescribed me some medicine. The change wasn't automatic for me, I didn't wake up the next day feeling instantly better. But I did recognize little things that felt better.  I remember leaving Maxs, driving down that hill on University and not feeling sad or alone, I remember feeling motivated and wanting to do things, I remember I started feeling happy more than sad.  I was starting to feel alive again, I was starting to feel like myself.

I still have bad days, sometimes I can feel my depression creeping up on me, but the good days far outweigh them.

I do things now that I know will make me happier.
I go outside, a lot.
I don't listen to really sad music.
I pray a lot to my Heavenly Father to help me be happy.
I love the girls that I nanny and I love that I can't be upset when i'm around them.

I love how I feel now.
I love feeling alive again.
Never again do I want to feel nothing.

Depression is real.
Depression is hard.
But depression doesn't mean its the end.