The Many Faces of My Depression

By Starr

How long can you sit in the closet and rock yourself away? Eventually, I would have to come out and face the truth about what was happening to me. No one had a clue that I was just contemplating suicide, but thats what makeup is for. I was a great actress and hid the dark circles underneath my tired eyes. I had to find ways to outrun him, but he kept coming.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496926753

Starr

Readers will love what this author is expressing in her book .She began her journey with barreness. Yet God left his footsteps all along the way. It was the evidence of a caring, loving shepherd leading and guiding her to a rich plain of green pastures. She is the author of several books, music cds, poetry. The author also graduated with a degree from Roxbury college. She has been teaching other women how to overcome.

Book preview

Depression

Depression is a beast. It covers and suffocates you without any given sign.

It’s full of bright colors, and when we allow it to get the best of us, the colors swirl and turn deep dark and black. And just when you think you are having a good day, and want to add light to the dark, it covers you like a parachute and blocks all the light from coming in to save you from the day.

I hated being depressed, sitting in the dark, rocking against the wall and constantly thinking about ways to kill myself. When friends would ask what does it feel or look like when it hits, I would just say the usual, that it was a dark cloud, or bubble that just follows you wherever you go. That didn’t seem to be enough information for them to understand, so I had to find another way to explain myself, with visuals or my own real-life scenarios. Most of my symptoms started out and still may occur from time to time. I’ve learned to understand the signs and how to deal with them the best I can. It wasn’t anything to be taken lightly, and I would experience many challenges which could occur daily, weekly, or months on end. They included;

• Mood changes (sad, anxiety, panic attacks, frustrated, confused, suicidal)

• Lack of sleep (restless, thinking too much, body aching, fatigue, need of sleeping pills)

• Appetite (comfort food, binge eating, loss of appetite)

• Concentrating (rapid thoughts, worrying, stress, tension)

I have and still do experience those feelings. But, then again I needed to express myself to help myself and others to understand me, and maybe they could relate that to someone they know dealing with depression. Immediately,

I had thoughts of scenes of individuals in movies from long ago that portrayed the complexity of depression right on the head. Now some of these movies go many years back, but this is the best way I can describe it. There was a scene in the first Super Man movie, when the 3 bad people were banished into the universe for wrong doing. I interpreted it in a different way, in the scene, they were put in a floating glass box, and were continuously beating the glass trying to save themselves. That’s what depression can feel like. Your floating around, above, and to the side of people because you can’t explain or want to face anything. You never stop beating the glass. You want it to shatter, and bust in a million pieces, and hopefully someone will realize that there is glass falling all around, and see that you may need help. But, you feel ashamed and embarrassed that someone may really find out the truth about you, so you cover up the beast and pretend to smile.

Or, another example I thought of was the movie The Green Mile. When the prisoner John Coffee held in all the bad that he had seen or experienced from other people, he held it in for a long time until he had to throw it up to make himself well. Again, those scenes had depression written all over. It’s like your holding in all your doubt, pity, disgust, blame, that you don’t know where to place it, except deep down inside.

When John Coffee couldn’t take it anymore he would sweat, lay in the fetal position, and rock back and forth until he released the bugs that infested his mind and body. This was similar to what I experienced many nights and days throughout my life, and my personal story will explain how I was able to let it go.

I no some people probably thought I was crazy at times. How was it that they just spoke to me 30 minutes ago, and I sounded like I was on top of the world, and now I want to kill myself. As ridiculous as it seems that is exactly how it happened. At first, I could never explain the feelings and why emotions turned so quickly at the drop of a dime. Here you have this cheerleading personality, who wants the best for everyone, but in the blink of an eye that could all change. A storm was right under the surface, and ready to break at any given moment. I could feeling coming. It was like an hour glass full of sand, dripping through the tightly middle of its body. I hated that feeling, and I still do, but learned what my triggers are. I had to find a way to overcome it and explain to those who wanted to understand.

My mission was to find out why this was happening to me, and without the use medication. I was determined to seek a higher powers help, to help me make it through this one and only life I had.

Over the course of the many years that I’ve been battling with this illness, people would ask what triggered me. And, what’s funny for a long while I never questioned my ownself, as to what were my stressors. I was so used to being sad and suicidal all the time, that it became the norm. The Oscars should have given me an award for all the great acting that I’ve done over the years.

No one would have ever thought that I just screamed and cried, pulled my hair until my scalp started to bleed, burned my arms, or maybe even sat in a tub of water trying to drown myself. Fortunately, something would always grab a hold of me and I would get it together to look presentable, and get ready to go out to the club with the girls, work, or wherever else I was headed at that moment.

And, when someone said you look like you been crying, I would always blame it on my allergies. Makeup does wonders. They had no clue. But what could they do for me, listen to my cry all the time? I already bugged my brother and sister at odd hours of the day, and knew there were tired of me, because

I was tired of myself. So, I had to become a great actress, and figure out what sets me off, and then pretend to act like all is well around them. It didn’t take long to write a bunch of things down, but I needed to come to terms with what made me want to sit in the dark and cry for hours.

The following are the main triggers of my depression, and how I eventually found a way to overcome them one step at a time.

1. People—My life has evolved around all sorts of people, and I found out that I don’t like a lot of them. They were from different age groups and nationalities. I would allow them to change my mindset from good to bad.

Their looks or thoughts of me could change my mood instantly. I found myself crying all the time behind closed doors, trying to find ways to please people who could care less about me, and who really needed to look at themselves. It was exhausting trying to please people who critiqued me without knowing me first. I’m not perfect by any means, and I didn’t need anyone to approve of me. So, again I prayed and looked for guidance, and it started to come.

I will never know why it took me so many years to realize that I didn’t need anyone to validate me. My family had never judged me, and I shouldn’t let a total stranger, who probably had some issues, make me feel less worthy. It wasn’t until my mid-thirties when I GOD if I fired all my so called friends from life, will I be ok? The feeling that came over me, from GOD was, to to let them go, and I will be your friend. "And, slowly but surely I let all the unhealthy relationships in my life diminish. I didn’t care if I was solo. It felt good for a change to not care for the opinion of others. I became stronger, didn’t cry anymore, and started to laugh if anyone judged me by their looks or thoughts. I could finally move forward, and just smile because I knew I was blessed.

2. Appearance: In the early stages, I found myself not wanting to get dressed, comb my hair, or just plain take care of myself. When you’re depressed, you have no energy or focus for anything. If my insides didn’t feel good, I could care less what I looked like on the outside. Sweat suits were my best friend. Anything baggy that would cover me up, or make me feel some what comfortable would do. I was always trying to find ways to hide the darkness that was shadowing me on a daily basis. There had to be another way to beat this illness, and I was determined to make it my personal mission to help myself. Unfortunately, it took many years, and up to my late thirties, to figure it out, but the good thing was I finally did. Well at least I started to understand what were my triggers, when it hit, and how to help myself overcome it.

3. Sadness: Any form of sadness hurts, and for me at times it can put me in a crazy mind set. I would take any situation and go to another level with it.

I hated not being close with my mother, people teasing me, trying to find happiness, men, sad movies, the wind blowing the wrong way, or figuring out my purpose in life. Trying to understand why just the little things would set me off would drive me crazy. I felt like I was bi-polar at times. There were a lot of tears shed along my journey of finding myself. It was rough. So when

I made the last phone call to my brother, in the middle of the afternoon while he was trying to get ready for a meeting and said, girl this is the wrong time for this, I knew the crying tantrums had to come to an end on that day.

It was a wake up call at that moment, and I needed to wake up. He had a life and was doing just that. There was no time to listen to his sister’s stories about what happened to me many years ago. He cared, because he called later to check up on me, but I new my not so sad life had to come to an end. I had to find someone else to complain to, and there was a whisper in my ear that said, try GOD.

So my solution was to narrow down what makes me sad and how to handle it so I wouldn’t hurt myself. I was exhausted from crying, and for a change I wanted to smile. There was no written list, but more of a mental note. Sad movies in any form would really set me off. So I refused to watch any television show, movie, or news that would show anything that would set my emotions in a whirlwind. What’s funny is that I hated to be in the darkness, but love scary movies. I can’t be sad if I’m too busy being scared. Or, just thinking of things that would make me laugh when I felt mellow. I started to practice this a lot. Whether I was sitting on the couch, or at the stop light, I found a reason to laugh. It was funny, at the worse moment my brother would call and tell me about some guy picking his nose at the stop light. He would go into so much detail that it would gross me out and make me crack up laughing at the same time. He did this on a regular basis, but never new this actually helped me throughout the day. And, when I went to visit my family in Chicago one Christmas, the weather was so bad that it knocked the cable out, and we realized there was nothing we could do, but watch the pre-recorded movie The Lord Of The Rings at least 5 times. That simple moment has helped me laugh a lot and not take things so seriously.

4. Past Thoughts: Why is that we think of bad things that happened to us over and over again, and just can’t let go of it. I hated that thoughts would creep into my brain when I least expect it, or trying to sleep and dreaming of bad, and unresolved issues that took place many years ago. I would think by suppressing those thoughts, they would eventually go away, but wasn’t the case. My head would pound and ache from the anger I had with myself for waking up mad, sad, or confused about someone who I don’t even talk to anymore. It had been years for most of the situations, that happened but I would allow myself to relive the moment again. When I started to wake up mad before I even got out of bed, I knew something had to change. Tossing and turning was my basic sleeping pattern on a weekly basis. Sleeping pills saved me from many nights of insomnia, but I hated it. Who wants to take a bunch of pills for something that should be a natural process. I struggled for a long time, and wanted to be free of this mental anguish. There must be a way to have healthy thought patterns, and I was determined to find my way.

My solution at first was to beat the bad thoughts, by again, suppressing them and immediately thinking of something funny, or anything that would take it away. Well that didn’t last for long. I continued to have past history situations that would drive me crazy. Waking up at