Personal Narrative: Dealing With Depression

“Your grandfather didn’t just die Faith, he was murdered. My father put rat poison in his wine that night that our families got together for a dance. I tried so hard to stop him but he locked me up in my room so I couldn’t.” Embry had a shaky voice and a loud cry now. My head swarmed with terrible thoughts that I couldn’t get out of my head. My whole family thought he died of a heart attack. What if my parents really knew the truth and weren’t telling me? Why is Embry going for me and not anybody else? I collapsed to the ground. Lily immediately ran out from the popcorn cart and held me tight. It felt like my world was coming to an end. Embry kept apologizing like it was all her fault.

I was 21 now and I’d been hiding out at julia’s house for years now. I had a job and a child. For a long time i had been doing things on my own. I couldn’t live with my grandparents and face the fact they were the reason why my mother killed herself. At home someone kept knocking on the doors at night but we never knew who it

When I heard that these disorders could also affected me resulting from major depressive disorder, I was still in denial mode. Then I came to realize that having MDD was only affecting me, but also affecting my family and my friends. I became a bother to them and also came to realization that I needed help. So I asked my parents to help me seek treatments to where I can get back to my normal self. My normal self was a person that was cheerful, always making jokes, happy, and just lived life to the fullest. I miss my normal self. The treatments that I had were very affective. The disorder that I was treated for is psychotherapy, where I talked about what is making me think negative thoughts and it allow discussing how I can improve on thinking

Every time I get in one of these low-grade depressive cycles where I'm excessively pensive and melancholic rather than catatonic and wishing for death, I quickly develop this one-off obsession with the sea that I can't explain. I'm either lusting to swim it, or having nightmares of drowning in it every other night.

If I were a famous YouTube sensation, my most watched video would be called: My Depression and Anxiety Story. When I was a Sophomore in high school, I went through a long period of time where I felt utterly miserable and alone all of the time. I would want to share my story with everyone, so they would know that even the most unlikely person can go through hardships. This is my story.

High school is a hard experience on its own, but going through it with a mental illness makes it ten times as hard.

When most people think of the words “mentally ill” people they thought of the terms “Crazy, Sick, and confused.” A mental illness can be a wide range of conditions that affect mood, thinking, and behavior. When I asked Clayton what he thought of when he heard the words “Mentally ill” he hesitated and said “I don’t know” then I explained to him the first three terms he thought of he responded “Psychotic, crazy, and Insane asylum.” This is no surprise to me because when people usually think of the mentally ill they think of the mentally ill that are in movies and are blown completely out of proportion. The second person I asked was my thirteen-year old sister, Mariah, her first three words were “Mental Disorder, Insane, and personality disorder.” This was kind of surprising because her answers sounded more educated than others.

My dad shot blame at me like bullets at a target. The first time I was the victim of these shots was the day he got the news from my high school that I needed to be taken to the hospital. They found out that I attempted suicide. His anger is all he could remember that day. He accused me of only doing this because I hated my culture and I never wanted to be Mexican.

I lounged on the patched-up La-Z-Boy recliner looking out the glass with my son’s wheelchair parked beside me. His face was almost blank as he continued to put on his usual poker face.

Although, I continued to encounter each stage of life event markers, and surpass each one to go onto the next (Broderick & Blewitt, 2015). As in life we develop more each day, during the adult years cognitive and socioemotional functions will continue to develop and evolve from the ages 30’s and beyond (Broderick & Blewitt, 2015). When I reached the age of 30 years old I decided I wanted more from life, than just a menial job, I want a career. At the age of 30 years old I started LPN school, my children were old enough that they could help around the home while I studied. One year later I graduated from nursing school as an LPN, this was a great accomplishment for me, I was then able to pursue employment that would matter in the lives of others.

At the age of thirteen I was diagnosed with major depression and anxiety, I have spent the past five years in and out of doctor’s offices, counselor appointments, and therapy sessions. Throughout all of my experiences I have tried to prove to doctors, my parents, and myself that I don’t need medication to act like a “normal” human being. I would start taking my medication for a few weeks and while I was on a high note I would slowly wean myself of the drug in the hopes that my illness would be cured.

I’m sitting in Rhino Market & Deli struggling to write. I am also hosting an open mic (well, I’m sitting by the P.A. making sure it doesn’t feed back as random people and friends take turn singing and playing guitar: I am loosely orchestrating the event). I might also be keeping an eye on the PFO Slam Poetry GroupMe texts. I catch myself and smile: I remember vigorously complaining about having too much to do back when I wasn’t doing half as much as I am now. How did I get here? Well, in a way, depression.

It is deathly quiet in my apartment, just like always. Every night I come home to silence, no one to greet me ‘hello’ or a ‘how was your day’. My father left my family when I was only a baby, and my mother was a bad influence, so my aunt decided to take custody of me and my little sister. Living with my aunt was a blast, my little sister and I always had fun there. Only a couple years of living with her, my aunt and little sister passed away because of a car accident.

My depression is not YOUR depression. Your thoughts are not the same as MY thoughts. Your behavior has nothing to do with MY behavior. Your body does not feel the same as MY body. YOUR solution to the problem is yours not mine, nothing works the same way for everyone. You have no clue what I go through, the emotions that drown me, they may share the same label or name but they are not the same. You speak to me as if you know? What do you know? You only know your own experience, thoughts, moods and how they are drowning you, not me. People are quick to just speak without any real emotion or thought behind their gibberish. My mind is my home and your mind is your home; they may share the same structure and/or materials used to build that home but they are setup completely differently, understand yet?

When I was at Merced college I met the most wonderful person in the world. She was so easy to talk to and so relaxed and caring. We talked about so many topics through the two years we had classes. We talked about family, money, our education, drugs, and previous relationships during the breath of our relationship. She disclosed so much information before I really started to disclose intimate information about myself. As we got closer and closer going more in depth in the conversation and the amount of disclosing as well as how personal the disclosure was which in turn gave me anxiety. What really stopped the relationship from going to the next level was my high anxiety and vulnerability about certain topics. Do to this level of anxiety and