My Battle with Depression!

If you follow me on Facebook, you know that I am a HUGE Robin Williams fan, and almost every morning, I start my posts with a hearty GGGOOOOOOOODDDD MOOORRRNNINNNGGGG!!!!  And every time I type it, I hear his voice in my head. 🙂  But the last couple days, I have realized that maybe I adore him so much, because I could feel a bit of a connection to him.

I don’t talk about this often, but I have struggled with depression for most of my life. I am going to be honest, in the fact that I believe that no one should EVER feel ashamed of having a mental illness, but I unfortunately still feel the need to keep some things about myself hidden.  I joke about it at times, but that is to hide the fact that the struggles and terrors were/are very tough on me.

I have never felt worthy of real love because I have never thought much of myself.  And my actions and appearance for most of my life were a testament to those feelings.  I was bullied and/or disrespected, in more way than one, often by people I either loved or thought were people I could trust.  At the age of 9, I had had enough, and tried to kill myself.  My Mom stopped me.  Then we brawled over the knife, and I was sent to a locked down adult psychiatric unit.  Where not only was I not helped, but I acquired even more demons by being passed around as a play thing between the other patients.  And by having quite possibly the WORST psychiatrist in the world who decided to try to “heal” me by scaring me with threats that I would never get to see my family again if I didn’t “shape up”!

I drove all those emotions down DEEP!  I learned to deal with the sadness and depression that was inside of me.  But since I was in such a dark place and still suffering inside, I put myself through a lot of self torture and self mutilation.  Cutting, burning, and eating disorders including bulimia and even an All Ex-Lax diet.  I looked for acceptance from ANYONE!  Sometimes I found it in not great places.  I always seemed to look for the “bad boys”.  Well, they NEVER disappointed, they all treated me pretty bad!  Tony(my now husband), with his long hair and fast car, looked “bad”, but he actually turned out to be a rare “one of the good guys” 😉  He listens to me when I need to talk without preaching to me what I should do to make me all better, and he never makes me feel like I “deserved” all the bad things that happened to me as a kid, or that I am weird or bad because these things are part of my past.   And even though he is not “in to” the whole Beachbody Coaching thing all that much, he supports me in it 100%, because he sees what it has done for my confidence to be around so many positive people.

So if things happen for a reason, maybe that reason was to make someone else eventually see this post and realize that they too can make a change and find a way to deal with the Rock Bottom, horrible, UGLY parts of your life.  Many things over the years have brought times of depression.  My back injury and the 3 surgeries that followed, alcohol addictions, losing my daughter, my Mom, and both of my In-laws, the struggles of watching my father age, put him in a nursing home, sell his house, and watching him slowly slip away to become a person I don’t even recognize anymore, and even the occasional  relationship/marital problems -neither of us is perfect, and marriage is WORK!   But I have been blessed to have someone who would listen.  And I always try to be there to listen without judgement when someone needs me to be there to vent to or spill their heart out to.  So even if I don’t always think great things about myself, maybe someone else will.

Still, it is so hard to see a man with so much love inside him and with the ability to spread such great happiness to so many, lose the battle against his own demons.  If you know someone who often does battle with something deep inside, don’t push, but if they reach out in even the most subtle of ways, try to keep your ears and heart open.

Rest in Peace Robin.

The Touching Story Behind Robin Williams’ Close Friendship With Christopher Reeve « K-EARTH 101.