Living Off Balance by Alison Lake

Author:Alison Lake
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lachesis Publishing

Chapter 6

Perspectives and Depressive Episodes

I have called depression my ‘demon.’ Having a visceral fear of the evil present on earth, I do not use this word lightly. The demon is a little creature that sits on my shoulder and holds on by his claws so I cannot loosen him. When he is ‘on my back,’ I know intellectually what is happening, but emotionally I cannot control it. And, for all I know, this demon could be a product of true evil as detailed by Christianity and Islam. For a depressed person, these feelings can be alien and frightening even if they are part of you.

One night last year, I remembered how it used to feel to be severely depressed. During my divorce, the night prior to my long-awaited pickup of my children on the opposite coast, anxiety overtook me. I was also in the middle of a medication change, which was very bad timing. I hyperventilated and cried without clear reasoning or resolution. I drove an hour on the road to the military hospital and went to the emergency room.

My plan was to get a soothing drug like Xanax to get me through the transition. I asked the young orderly to point me in the right direction. When he asked if I was the one who needed to be seen, I lost control again. I could not stop sobbing quietly. I did so throughout the check-in process and while sitting in the examination room. I was so embarrassed. The kindly gentleman doctor listened to me with quiet sympathy as I tried to explain what was going on. When I finally allowed myself eye contact with him, he simply said, “It's hard, isn't it?” I felt completely lost, hopeless, and out of control that night.

The experience humbled me and made me grateful for the help of medication. With it, I can look at human life with hope and tenacity. Without it, I feel panic at the sadness and tragedy of this world—events that affect us all. In that brief period, I walked in a haze of chemical imbalance caused by one drug leaving my body before the new drug had a chance to fully absorb.

With this window to my past that night, I remembered how it used to be for me. It was a glimpse of my past years, back in my 20s, when my depression was dark and frightening. Being mentally healthy recently, for the most part, has helped me forget some of the intensity and fear I used to feel. That night, I worried about the direction of my life and the safety of my children. I obsessed to the extreme over other people's perceptions of my life choices and the effects of my choices on other people. These thoughts overwhelmed me and caused desperation. Most of all, I remembered the root of my illness.

My first experience of truly losing control of myself, at age 20, frightened me. I lived in a basement apartment then—a mistake for anyone who responds to changes in seasons and sunlight with mood imbalance.

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