Coming Out of the Dark Closet of Major Depressive Disorder

The curtains are drawn, blocking the mid-day sun on what should be a normal work day. I’m lying in bed now, covers pulled tightly to my chest. The bed has become my haven. My mind races with terrible thoughts. I’m not sure I can do this. My stomach churns with anxiety, my eyes well up, but there are no tears. They won’t come.

This Is an Illness With a Name: Major Depressive Disorder

The children come home from school, and I can’t get out of the bed. I fake a smile. My wife, a saint whose vows are being tested, suggests something is wrong.

I am missing out on life, missing what should be some of the best days with the children. I don’t tell her just yet that I’m just trying to survive the day, trying to make it to bedtime, when I can take a sleeping pill and hope my despair disappears into a deep slumber.

The next day, we go to the doctor. He gives what I am feeling a name. Depression.

He prescribes medicine that doesn’t work. It seems to make it worse. We go back again a few weeks later and the doctor concedes that I have reached a depth of depression beyond his capacity to treat (watch the difference between just "feeling depressed" and having serious depression).

Very soon, I start seeing a psychiatrist and, at this point, I don’t really care what others might think about it. I wonder what the lady in the corner of the waiting room thinks of me and then I realize she has her own issues, her own battles to fight. I wonder what the man sitting nearby struggles with, but then I realize for the first time, maybe, that I am not in this fight alone.

That was about seven years ago. I have been on an antidepressant ever since and found drugs that work better. I have given up a prolific binge-drinking career. I changed my real career, too.

I still struggle with depression, sometimes on a daily basis. When things are bad, the bad days outnumber the good ones by three to one. There are good times, too, enough to give me hope. Long stretches of good times, even.

Yet seven years later, I am not cured. I am not one of those individuals—at least not yet—that can just defeat depression, stay medicated and be well. It is disheartening at times. A lot of the time.

Self-Stigma and Major Depressive Disorder

Guilt, shame, and embarrassment. I feel anguish for my wife, for my children, for my mother and brothers who see me this way. I am still embarrassed to admit I suffer from mental illness.

This blog, I hope you can understand, is hard to do. Yet I am tired of keeping this problem to myself. I want to help others who suffer like me or far more than I suffer. I have been in the closet with this problem for some time now, yet I can see a crack of light under the door. I want to open it and bask in the fullness of life on the other side.

I am glad that HealthyPlace.com asked me to write this "Coping with Depression" blog. I am tired of that closet because it is a dark and frightening place to be.

My hope is readers of this blog, who suffer like I suffer, will find something they can relate to here. I can’t promise that it will help you. I can only promise absolute honesty. That is the best that I can do today.

Jack Smith also blogs at www.onemanswar.blogspot.com