Sunday, March 31, 2013

In the midst of happiness

When someone is depressed, she could be feeling that she what she is feeling is so powerful that there's no way that it can be defeated. There's like this uncontrollable force that brings the depressed person down. No amount of laughters and happiness around her could bring her mood up.

That's just how I felt the entire duration of the Holy Week when the family was complete, my nieces and nephews were happily playing and laughing their hearts out, and everything just seemed so light and easy. 

It seems there is this heavy burden on my shoulder trying to pull me down, and it seems more powerful than my will power to think that I have no reason to be so low. At the end of the day, I would force myself to sleep and convince myself that I need to relax my mind from too much thinking and self-pitying. 

Good thing though that I recognize that I was not feeling all right. I let myself feel bad. I knew too that I had to tell someone. So I told someone and he suggested ways how I could feel better. I kinda followed his suggestions. 

I talked to my brother as my friend suggested. I told my brother my worries and anxieties about work. It's funny though that we live in one compound and his family home is just a few steps aways but we communicated through email. I am still not used to talking openly to my brother, to any of my brothers.

It sure feels good to let someone in the family know my anxieties. But it really doesn't solve anything.

I wanna find my place. I wanna know where I belong. I wanna know who I am becoming. 

But I don't have fast and easy answers. They say, I just gotta be patient, figure out where God is redirecting me. But being patient still leads me more to questions - until when should I wait? how do I know that this God's will for me? how strong should I be?



Wednesday, March 27, 2013

The Pill and I

Summer of last year marked the beginning of my extreme loneliness. Only a month after the summer season, I was advised by my therapist to see a psychiatrist. That meeting with my psychiatrist also marked the beginning of my daily intake of pills to fight this thing inside me called Depression.

I honestly feel afraid how my life would be without taking this pill. I want it out of my life. But I am also fearful that I wouldn't be able to handle myself without this.

You see there was this one time that I intentionally did not take my pills for consecutive days and find out what could happen to me. I wanted to prove my therapist and my psychiatrist that I can handle myself without the pills. On the fourth day of not taking the medicine, I broke down. I got myself into a heated fight against my then boyfriend. I shouted, cried, and just felt so extremely mad.

At that time, I thought it was normal that I got mad. But then my therapist advised me to tell my psychiatrist about my breakdown. True enough, my breaking down on the fourth day without the pills is precisely because of my not taking the med. So I couldn't do anything but follow the doctor's order not to experiment for it will surely have adverse effects.

She told me that I will take my medicine for six months. After six months, I could be advised to taper the intake and eventually stop. I looked forward to the six months after. But then, six months after came and she told me to continue taking the medicine daily.

Now, that this med is in me for almost a year, I don't know how else my life would be without this. Without it, would that mean that I will have to always exert an effort to be happy and choose happy thoughts? Would it also mean that people around me would have to be careful in approaching me? But I also don't like to give this condition as an excuse so I can be treated specially.

Oh, if I could also see this condition in a different light and find meaning why this has to happen.