In the past two weeks, I have finished writing two stories, each over ten thousand words long, and edited them in order to send on to outside editors.
I have walked ten miles in two-and-a-half hours, and I have swum a mile in a flat fifty minutes. I've biked fifteen miles.
I've taken the ice bucket challenge, donated to two charities, and volunteered for another two. I've also been to a meeting as part of the executive board of my synagogue.
I have been on time to both my jobs every day and taken care of every piece of business that has come up, including a surprise clusterfuck with the courts that occurred twice last week.
These are some of the things I've done in the past two weeks. In that time, I've also spent almost every waking moment reminding myself that if I kill myself, nobody is going to take care and love my two rabbits.
Hi. My name is Leslee. I am thirty-four. I have a Masters and a JD. I am licensed to practice law in two states. I have been published three times in academic books and trade journals. I have a black belt in taekwondo. I finished an Olympic-length triathalon in 2013 and will be walking a half-marathon in about a month. I have had people respond to my fiction stories, posted under a nom de plum, and tell me that those stories have helped them to deal with serious emotional traumas within their lives. I have a dog and two rabbits. I love to lindy hop, and have been swing dancing for fifteen years. I played bridge against my grandparents twenty years ago, and now I play it in bridge studios. I'm part of a Toastmasters group full of crazy-awesome people. I love to read. I like to bake and I like eating what I bake even more. I've been to China and Israel and a number of other places and I want nothing more than to go to a new and different places around the world.
And I am seriously, clinically depressed.
I have been in talk therapy on and off since 1992. I have been going consistently since 2006. In 2007, I finally consented to being put on meds. They worked for about six years. I had to change them four times in that span of years. They have not been working, despite new changes, for about six months now.
I exercise, I watch what I eat, I get the sleep I am supposed to get. I have been trying neuro-feedback for six months. If it was going to help, I probably would have seen a change by now.
I would like to try electro-convulsive therapy (ECT), and my therapist agrees it's probably my best option at this point, but it is $300 - $800 a treatment, and you start at two treatments a week. I could MAYBE afford one a month.
Lately, I've talked a few times on Facebook or at a Toastmasters meeting about how I "pass" as mentally healthy. About how that means most people do not understand what I am telling them when I say I'm depressed. And about how that makes it almost impossible to get real help or support outside of mental professionals paid to provide aid.
About how I taught myself early on--out of fear of the consequences of doing anything else--to believe that nothing in life except things that are pleasureful for me is optional. In other words: going to work? Not optional. Getting writing done? Optional unless I owe someone else a story. Then non-optional. Going to a board meeting? Non-optional. Reading a book? Optional, with a side of only-if-you-have-finished-everything-else.
This means I am insanely efficient, and if I tell you something is going to get done, it will either get done, or, on rare occasions, I will let you know well in advance that it is not going to be possible. This means people see me as put together, as "fine."
This means that in the eyes of the world, I am not depressed. I am maybe, perhaps, sad. Sadness is an emotion. It is an important emotion. It is not an emotion that makes death the only thing a person wants out of life. Depression does that.
Because my depression is even more invisible than that of the person who won't get out of bed, or who cuts herself, or who can afford, time and money-wise to go to the hospital, I spend a lot of time pushing back against people's misconceptions about depression, and how it functions. Those misconceptions have been rife in the media and popular discussion in the wake of Robin William's suicide, and I've felt more and more that I have some responsibility, because I have the ability to do so, to talk about what depression, and particularly functional depression looks like. And how functional depression requires as much support as the kind that keeps sufferers in bed.
Since I am working on being kind to myself--an uphill process--I am setting the goal of updating this blog once a week to talk about something related to functional depression, anything. And maybe people will read, and maybe they won't. Maybe someone will see this, and feel less alone, and maybe nobody will. But words are one of the few things I've always had control over, in a world where I have very little control over anything. They are the way I have met most of the people I am closest to in the world. So I am going to try this. Try and see if it helps me, if it helps others, if it helps.
