(In Prayer by Laurie Cooper)

Depression

Okay,

I usually try to keep it light, but memorable in this forum. Today, however is going to be heavy. As many of you know I live with, suffer from, however you want to put it, depression. I do not have control over when depressions will hit, I just know that it is a very scary time in my life. As I have stated in a previous blog I have had many friends who committed sucide and most of them were due to them falling into a heavy bout of depression. It is a disease that snuff's people out and that is the scariest part. You never know when this depression will be the one to take you under. I try to pray my way out of it, or eat something that increases endorphins or I will just lock myself in my room and cry. I have found that the older I get the worse they get and the longer they stay. I can be thrown into a depression just my someone saying something at just the right time, that is painful and hurtful, even if it were not intentional. Sometimes, I just fall into them for no apparent reason. I have sought help for it, but unless I am in crisis I usually am not very good at following up with it. I have had therapists that I am not comfortable with and so I stop going and don't seek another. I am also leery of having long term treatment for it since I have been in jobs where I have to get my own insurance and that does not bode well with a potential insurance company. I am not sure if these are excuses, which they very well may be but this is the reality that I am living. I fall into dark spirals that I am afraid I may never come out of, I become withdrawn and standoffish. Usually right before a deep depression I have a huge emotional high. Then I plummet like a person with a failing parachute. I force myself to maintain normalcy, to fight it. The fights are getting harder.

Ms. Denva

(The Struggle Lives On by Laurie Cooper)