A Moment of Clarity: Overcoming Postpartum Depression

I am realizing that my good days are increasing and the bad days are rapidly dying out. My erratic mood swings diminishing.

While I know I am most certainly not out of the woods as far as my depression is concerned, I am hopeful that the worst part of this postpartum insanity just might be over. I couldn’t live another day in the depths of this nightmare. It was scary knowing that I had lost all capability of dealing with it. There were so many days that I panicked through the fog and fought off the sickening urge to put an end to it. Times where I had to meditate on the fact that my family needs me, I can’t do this. I felt like a demon had taken over my body, ready to strike me down at any second That thought was the only reason I am still here today, and it is chilling to think how close to the edge I was so many times.

The last few days I have experienced a sense of renewed strength and energy. For the first time in half a year, I feel like I am actually here, present. Not just a mere observer in the Life of Tamra.

It is still hard. I am still struggling with it every day. But at least now I feel like I can breathe again and see clearly.

Thank God for Prozac and therapy. Now a few weeks into it, I know the drug is responsible for the feeling of normality. My psychiatrist explained it like this: A diabetic needs insulin because their body does not produce it the way it should A person who has clinical depression does not process chemicals in the body the way it should… so they need anti-depressants to be healthy the same way a diabetic needs insulin.

This was a hard concept for me to come to terms with. I was thinking the depression was a severe weakness. Here I was eating the right foods, exercising almost daily, taking an obscene amount of fish oil… and I was still barely functioning. I was thinking it was just a state of mind and I was too weak to overcome it.

I was wrong, and I see that now. It is not a weakness, it is a genetic predisposition that I have always lived with. I have spent the majority of my life depressed, starting as a young child well before puberty ever hit. I remember struggling with insomnia as a 7-year-old. I’d wake up in the middle of the night, my heart pounding, head racing, stressed and unable to fall back to sleep. Junior high was horrible. I became withdrawn and uncaring. High school was the same way. Even before I had kids it was a serious problem.

It came in waves… usually months at a time. Then there would be a period where I felt okay for awhile, but then the dark cloud always came back. I started feeling a sense of comfort in the depression, like it was an old friend. Painful, but comforting. With it, I was uncaring and mellow.

Then yesterday, out of the blue, I woke up and felt energetic. I took care of my little peeps, showered, brushed my teeth, and actually blow dried my hair. I even had the urge to put on a little makeup. This was a huge step for me, just the desire to do anything for myself at all, as lame as it sounds.

I wish that I would have known that resorting to drugs doesn’t make me failure sooner in life. That they could actually make me feel more like a human and less like an empty shell of a promising life if I could just escape the fog.

My family always made fun of the anti-depressant commercials on TV. I always heard about how the drug companies were just out to make money, and how doctors went out of their way to over-diagnose mental illnesses just because of the money involved.

While I believe this is partly true to some extent, I also see now that these medications were not developed to make the sane person a hazy vegetable. They were created to help the mentally comatose live a sane life.

While I have fought this my entire life, I have finally surrendered to the fact that I need this medication to function like a normal, healthy human being. And I am going to make darn sure that my girls grow up knowing my struggles with major depression and anxiety disorders. I don’t want them to think they have to suffer in silence like I did. There is so much help out there if you just ask.

And I am so glad that for the first time in my life I finally got help. Even if James forced it on me. I just didn’t know how to ask for it.

I do now.