Depression comes with mood swings

I didn’t realize that depression comes with mood swings.  I thought depression meant you were sad all the time.  But it’s not like that, at least not for me. I have periods of intense clarity, times when I can go out, get out of my pajamas and wear nice clothes, put on makeup, go for coffee. I did that today. It felt good. It felt good to connect with a friend for an hour. But afterward the crash came. I was exhausted, spent.  It took all my energy to go to a cafe and sit there with a cappuccino for an hour. An activity that I liked, but which absolutely took the good out of me.  How lame is that?  I know, I know, bad self-talk there, but I can’t help but think of how much people are achieving, every day, and my big achievement today was to get dressed and go for coffee. 😦

It’s true that I felt good during the afternoon, but this morning I could barely get out of bed.  I was so inexplicably sad that nothing mattered. I cried myself to sleep last night. For no reason.  My partner was worried to death. I told her I just wanted the sadness to stop. I don’t intend to harm myself (commit suicide), but I felt so out of control in regard to my emotions, that it was something bigger than me, that I was just the vessel for this big monster of sadness that was taking over me.  Last night was a blur, and then most of this morning, probably because I was so exhausted from last night.

Then the cloud lifted, temporarily.  I went for coffee.  Then I came home, napped for an hour, and was able to make dinner.  Again, my self-critic says “big deal! You made dinner!”  That self -critic is sure a bitch.

I panicked this morning, when I looked at a bottle of pills, and thought, how easy it would be for me to take all of them and just go to sleep.  But I won’t.  I could never do that to my family. I’d be miserable for life if it meant they wouldn’t have to suffer. But damn, is it hard.  So I called my psychologist and made an emergency appointment for tomorrow morning.  No doubt I’ll get there, and he’ll tell me exactly what he’s been telling me for weeks, that it will pass, I will get better, than I have to exercise patience, that I have to accept the depression and realize that I can’t do some of the things I used to do.  But I CAN’T accept this!  There has got to be something else I can do.

I’m still on the waitlist for a psychiatrist.  Right now my GP is prescribing my meds.  My appointment in June 11th.  I pray the wellbutrin starts really sinking in soon, and then when I see the psychiatrist he won’t change the meds.  The med addition (or changes, what have you) are really difficult.  I have only been on this new one 3.5 weeks and I’m out of my mind waiting for it to work.  The sadness is incredible.  And the mood swings (which are mostly a swing in a happy direction, not manic or angry): I can’t tell if they are really mood swings or am I just having a few good hours? Of course one of the symptoms of depression is confusion, so sometimes I can’t tell if I’m overreacting, or what is going on.

Depression is a bitch.  At one point I looked at my watch and I couldn’t tell what time it was.  It was like I forgot how to read a clock.  Just fucking great. It was probably only a few seconds that I stared at it, but enough to panic me once more.  Will this ever pass?