Depression, Menopause and gasp, anti-depressants

I don’t think the healing process ever ends. I just think there comes a time when you decide that your wounds aren’t going to stop you from becoming the person you want to be. Self-love is a lifelong journey and sometimes it’s harder than others. You just have to commit.

- Unknown

I’m not sure why my writing is the first to go when I get busy but it’s as if something turns off inside of me. The free-flowing spout of words turns to a light trickle until the last drop drips from me and the well runs dry. By the time I realize I am parched for meaning and context again six months have gone by.

I’ve also been pretty depressed. Not your run-of-the-mill ever so often blues. More of the “it’s hard to get out of bed and find joy about much of anything these days” version.

It’s no secret that I’ve struggled with depression since I can remember. Sometimes I like to  joke that I was just born sad. It’s confusing though because through the waves of sadness, I have a lot of memories of being a really joyful and enthusiastic kid too. I was always just wanting to make people laugh and be in the spotlight.

Over the years I’ve experienced a rollercoaster of very high ups and very low downs which, through a lot of therapy have come to deduce as the result of traumatic life experiences (ie: cancer, cancer, divorce, and then more cancer), a very volatile home growing up, and more than likely some off chemistry in my brain that I never wanted to admit to myself because then I’d also have to admit that I was not perfect. 

I developed a pretty significant eating disorder at the age of fifteen that I thought was just normal because it seemed like every other girl I went to school with had some variation too. We were all fighting our inner demons and the pressures of thinness equating to being loved and accepted or whatever our reasons were. The last time I purged my food was at age twenty-six but it really just turned into me being somewhat obsessive about eating gluten and dairy-free or vegan when I was one, or making sure I got my work out for the sake of “staying healthy.” It would be years later when I would realize it was never really about the weight or the food or the workouts and that the struggle would always be living just below the surface waiting to say hello again.

I think one of the harder parts of dealing with mental health, besides just everyday life, is the shame that comes with it. Like, get over yourself, Amanda. Snap out of it already. You are missing it. Life. It’s passing by so quickly and you are too busy being depressed. What do you really have to be depressed about anyway? I’ve always wondered, why can’t I just “fix“ myself as the wellness world touts so easily can be done?

With the yoga and meditation and breathing exercises coupled with the raw, vegan green potions and inner child work I’ve done, you’d think I’d be walking around levitating right there with Jesus with a rainbow-colored aura. But alas, I still can not walk on water.

Over the last year, I found myself thinking, “I’m done with this spiritual stuff. It doesn’t work. I’m still just as broken.” But healing isn’t linear and maybe there is something bigger at play here.

It wasn’t until the last few months when even the things that brought me back to life in the past, like my art, were not doing their job any longer that I started to get worried.

No sugar coating it. No skating around it. No fluffy filler words to lighten the hard edges of a not-so-pleasant part of being human. This was more than just passing sadness and it has been going on a lot longer than the last six months.

And I have felt and still feel terribly guilty that I feel this way because I have a really good life. Despite the hardships I’ve experienced, I have so many things to feel happy and grateful about. I know this. However, the thing about depression is, it’s confusing.  Sometimes it makes no sense to your logical mind.

If you struggle too then you understand this well. Most of the time you don’t get why you feel the way you do and because mental health is only now becoming a more mainstream topic of conversation, for a very long time you probably suffered in silence just like me and so many others. There is a whole lot of fear of being judged, fear of losing people, losing jobs, losing status, credibility, being labeled attention-seeking or dramatic. You name it, I’m scared of it.

I can’t help but think of all the lives that could have been spared had mental health been as natural to discuss as your physical health. Like, “Hey, I’m heading to the gym to do Zumba then I’m going to my therapist to talk about my trauma and attachment issues. I’ll be home by 8!” Followed by a response that sounds like, “Okay honey! Hope you get to the bottom of it and have a major breakthrough!”

What I’m currently experiencing is actually a mix of grief and depression and the extreme mental backlash of menopause. Maybe you’ve heard people joke about women going through menopause feeling like they are going crazy and I’m here to tell you it’s true. But nobody who's actually gone through menopause tells you this. Mainly because they can’t remember it because what comes with menopause is a whole lot of brain fog and forgetfulness. And dry eyes. God the dry eyes are horrible too.

My brain feels both flat and overstimulated and fuzzy all at the same time. This is never a good combination because what follows is a lot of confusion, a kind of out-of-body experience, and a loss for words. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in mid-conversation over the last six months and I can’t remember what I was talking about.

So yeah, I guess you could say I’ve been a bit depressed and trying to adjust to a body that doesn’t even feel like mine any longer and I haven’t really known what to write about because I’ve been in this very confusing metamorphosis of some kind. I am no longer the person I was but not sure who is left standing in her place. And I can’t help but wonder: Is this depression, menopause, or is this what so many refer to as a mid-life crisis?

Or worse, what if it’s actually all three?!

The last six months have looked like a whole lot of denial and trying to convince myself that this will just pass. I’ve doubled down on therapy and well, hoping all the “tools” I’ve acquired over the years will help.

Some days I wonder if I’m not really depressed and I’m  just bored because I’ve been practicing not buying into and contributing to drama and my mind and body haven’t quite adjusted yet. Once I realized how addicted I was to it I realized that I had to change it.

Sometimes I’ll call up my good friend Rachael and say in my super melodramatic voice, “Raaaaaaaaaaach, I’m itching. I’m itching for a fix and drama is my drug!” and I always draw out the draaaammmma part to give it, ya know, drama and she’ll laugh. Oh I love her loud laugh which makes me remember that I am actually kind of funny, and then well, we laugh together because she has the same addiction that I do and we remind ourselves that we are done with the drama. Drama = bad. We are better than drama. And we are in drama recovery.

So, I stopped writing because I’ve been dealing with the reality that this has been going on for oh, about thirty years now and maybe it’s time to really confront my depression. Maybe I really am a depressed person. I mean, really.

I stopped my podcast. I stopped sharing from my heart because how do you really write about this stuff anyway? Plus my art started taking off and I got scared that if I was really transparent, people would think I was crazy and stop buying my art. I found myself folding into the space of safety.

Until about a month ago when I started hearing that ever so quiet voice coming from deep within. No, not those voices. This one is just the voice of my intuition. It whispers, “Let me out. You have to share me Amanda because I am part of you and people will get it because a lot of people are experiencing this too.”

So here it is:

Hi, I’m Amanda and well, I have depression. Real, bonafide, not just the blues depression.

And I think it got a lot worse when the dust settled from having my hysterectomy and menopause hit me like a mac truck going at full speed. 

Things have been tough and alongside the handfuls of hair that’s been falling out the heavy layer of grief has felt heavier than anything before and for the first time ever, I decided it is time to go on antidepressants and that both excites me and scares the shit out of me.

After six months of zoom therapy, two weeks ago I sat in my therapist’s office face-to-face because we had both been vaccinated and I stared at the business card scribbled with the name of a Psychiatrist to call about getting on medication and the truth is, all I could think was: “Am I really this person?”

The next morning I woke up with a thick cloud of unexplainable heaviness and the dread of starting my day and thought, “Yes Amanda, you really are.”

So I called. All my friends who I knew were on antidepressants and I asked about their experience with them just to affirm to myself that I am not alone on this antidepressant journey. Then after about the fifth call from my mom who would casually, not so casually ask if I’d called the Psychiatrist yet, I realized that I think I really need to do this.

I called. And turns out they don’t actually take my insurance which inevitably had me putting it off for another few weeks until I realized that if I don’t do this I’ll never know if there really is a light at the end of an often very dark tunnel and I thought, “Amanda, what if this IS the thing that will help? Don’t you owe it to yourself to experience a little peace?”

So I sat with my doctor and explained it all to her with brutal honesty. The darkest thoughts I’ve ever had were no longer a secret.

And I felt a tad bit freer.

I don’t really want to go on antidepressants. I just want the broken bits inside to fix themselves. I really wanted green juice and reiki and the crystals I have lined around my room to transmute the sadness. I wanted to find the hole that makes me feel this way and stuff it full of whatever I can so that I don’t have to take a pill to make me feel better. I want to be able to fix this myself. I didn’t want to be an actual “depressed” person.

The truth is, for a very long time I quietly judged others for going on them. And I hate nothing more than a) that I did that and b) being a hypocrite.

So now I’m a judgmental hypocrite and a bonafide depressed person. 

Great.

Or, I’m human. I don’t know yet. All I know is that I’m definitely not a green juice drinking, levitating Jesus type with a rainbow-colored aura.

(Yet.)

So, here I go.

Saying it out loud feels both freeing and terrifying and I’ve been telling those close to me as if it were some dirty secret as I nervously say, “Hey, I need to tell you something….”

Turns out it’s not really so dirty of a secret because I can’t tell you how many people I know who respond by saying, “Oh, I’m on them. They really help,” Just as matter of fact.

And like so many other things in my life I’ve made this bigger than it needs to be. There is nothing wrong with going on antidepressants.

So this morning I twist the cap and shake out the first pill into the palm of my hand and stare at it and I can’t help but wonder, were you the answer all along?

Bottoms up I think as I swallow it with a little bit of water along with my estradiol for hormone replacement two hours after my taking thyroid medication and laugh at the irony that this organic, green juice drinking, yoga-practicing, reiki getting, inner child soothing, gluten-free ex-vegan now has a shelf lined with prescription drugs.

And I head out to my shop to get some work done and realize that hope is resting just below the surface for the first time in a very long time.