I am sure you have heard the phrase "a bottom feeder". It is a metaphor for someone who feeds off the lowest and seediest parts of life. I am not that. But I am recognising that it is possible to be stuck at the bottom in life. Imagine a bottom feeding fish, swimming around in the almost dark and murky waters. All this fish sees is the mud a few centimeters in front of it's face. It is oblivious to the amazing wonders just a few metres above, where the sun's light reveals more and encourages life to thrive and grow.
In this sense I have been a bottom feeder. And the worst thing about it is you don't really know you are. You actually start to believe that all there is is mud. You lose faith that there could be anything else. Mud becomes normal.
For the last 6 months I have been on a new medication. It is an SNRI and works to make my brain more sensitive to both seratonin and noradrenaline. Gradually I have been increasing my dose, with the support of my very caring doctor. I didn't want to be on more medication than I needed. This new medication goes up in very small increments but the maximum dose is very high in pure grams than my previous medication. But what I am learning is you cannot compare dosages between medications. It would be like comparing 500g of beef mince with 500g of ground black pepper. One is a good family meal, the other could be used as a form of torture. Anyway, after multiple increases between January and March, I was feeling better.
I wasn't in that horrible blackness and having the awful self hatred or thoughts of self harm, ( the shame of sharing that I struggle with that level of depression and those thoughts is so huge). And since it had been that bad, things seemed so much better. Unfortunately with this type of medication, a positive response to an increased dose just confirms it was necessary. But if the dosage is still inadequate, the positive side effects will gradually wear off. Slowly the water gets murkier and you sink millimeter by millimeter down into the mud.
I would think to myself as I woke up with dread in the morning, that is was just tired. As I became more and more overwhelmed I told myself that my kids weren't sleeping well and my hours at work had changed. It was understandable. And then I started thinking it was probably my fault. That right there is the powerful deception of depression. The mud and murkiness is my fault. If I just exercised more, or was stronger or calmer or like those mums over there...until I forgot that maybe it was just that my brain was broken. And not my fault at all.
I am so grateful for more objective measures of my mental wellbeing such as the Edinburgh scale. I can go it online and it gives me an indication of whether I am ok. If I am aware enough I can catch a slide downhill before it gets to crisis point. And this time I did. And two weeks after another dosage increase , the sun is out and I am swimming to the surface again. I ask myself "why did I let myself suffer for so long?" The sad answer is that if you are used to suffering from the very lonely pain of depression it is easy to put up with things being not ok for a very long time before thinking "I deserve better and I remember the light".
So now I am hoping and praying that if this increase is not enough, that I will realise and not drift down to the bottom again.
