At the beginning of this year, I finally decided that I couldn’t keep going like I was, and so I asked my doctor to put me on anti-depressants.  I’d gone all 46 years of my life without them and felt weak for having to ask for them.  I have always tried to do everything on my own, and even to this day, I hate asking for help.  My anger is what usually fuels my motivation when I’m left having to do something that seems overwhelmingly hard.  And rather than ask for help, I usually just use all that built up negative energy and say a slew of cuss words to complete those difficult tasks.

I think this incessant need to do everything on my own, comes from the way I was raised.  I was always made to feel guilty when asking for anything as a child.  I would get reprimanded when even asking for the simplest of things.  And so I learned how to do most everything on my own.  This way of being raised had its benefits in many ways.  I think I am a much more self-sufficient person because of it and I never give up on anything.

I think if I had to choose one word to describe me, it would be “determined.”  But sometimes, I feel like I just want someone else to take care of me for a change.  I would love to have someone there to help me, without me even having to ask.  To say to me, “That’s enough; you’ve done plenty; let me help you.”  And I want to feel like I can say yes to that, and accept their help.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to change.  I’m getting older and more set in my ways.  I’m just plain stubborn most of the time, and my girls would agree.  They see how irritated I get and how I try not to ask for help.  It usually takes breaking something, for me to finally give in and let them help me.  Usually, it’s me that gets broken because of the stupid things I try to do without help.  And of course, it doesn’t seem to stop me the very next time, from repeating the same act of stupidity.  I guess that’s what stubborn people do.  We’re a glutton for punishment.

I just ended the anti-depressants yesterday.  They seemed to help at first, but then after several weeks, I started feeling anxious all the time, extremely restless, and shaky.  My doctor slowly decreased my dose over the last week, and I do feel more like my old self again.  I have mixed emotions though.  I really did feel better for about the first three weeks, and I’m trying to figure out why I started to feel so bad the longer that I took them.

I still feel like I need to do something to control what I believe to be depression, but I’m not sure what to do to help myself.  I think journaling is the best thing that I can continue to do for now.  At least until I find a better way to help myself.  I’d love to have someone to talk to.  Everyone always talks about having a therapist, but I have never had one.  I suppose that’s a luxury that I will never have.  If my insurance covered that sort of thing, I would see a therapist in a heartbeat, but unfortunately, it doesn’t, and so I have to keep on sorting things out for myself.  Anyway, I feel like I’m starting to ramble, so I’ll end this for today.  Thanks for reading.  ~M