I’ve been thinking a lot about the past lately. Recently I was asked why I no longer work at the hospital by someone in my running group. I gave the standard “it’s a long story” because it wasn’t something I wanted to talk about in that moment. I didn’t want to deal with the feelings of loss and despair that would inevitably creep up. I still don’t know that I want to talk about it in person with anyone, but I want to get my thoughts out and figured I might as well do it this way.

As the title alludes, I struggle with depression. It needs to be said that I wasn’t diagnosed by a doctor (I’d feel too weird talking about it face to face), but I have definitely fit the criteria in the past. It’s not constant, and it’s only been really bad a few times in the last 8 years, but it’s something that’s always in the back of my mind. I can sometimes feel it try to sneak into my life and overtake me, but I’ve learned some good coping mechanisms and can generally keep it from getting too bad or carrying on for too long. I find that I feel it the most when I’m in situations where I feel “stuck”, like what’s happening now. I don’t talk about this with anyone, because the two people I chose to trust enough at the beginning to talk to about it told me to “quit being a drama queen” and that “it couldn’t be that bad.” I had no desire to talk to anyone else about it after that, even though I probably would have found some support from someone. I just didn’t want to take the risk of being brushed off again.

It started 8 years ago when I was working as a respiratory therapist. I got a job at the hospital I most wanted to work at, got along well with my coworkers, and was knowledgeable about my field. Everything was fine throughout 2011 and into the first half of 2012, but I felt a change come over me. Nothing I was doing was different, but this horrible feeling of unease and hopelessness started following me around like a shadow. I’m a highly sensitive person as it is, and working with the most critically ill patients in the hospital was difficult. Yes, it was rewarding when they recovered, but it was absolutely heartbreaking when they didn’t. Seeing good people in bad situations they didn’t deserve was really difficult. A teenage boy with a head injury from skateboarding he would never recover from, a baby that wasn’t expected to survive the night, and a young woman with an overwhelming infection that put her on a ventilator for months and who ended up with cognitive deficits… Those are just a few of the cases I can still vividly remember. Being around that kind of heartache every day haunted me. I had a hard time sleeping, I didn’t want to leave the house, I would cry on my way to work and in the bathroom on breaks, and I just ended up becoming so numb to everything that I had nothing left to feel. Depression eventually stole the job I studied and trained so hard for and I couldn’t carry on working there anymore. I pushed myself hard to make it work, but in the end, I couldn’t do a thing about it.

I tried to find a job within respiratory therapy that wasn’t in the critical care environment, but those jobs are highly competitive and I wasn’t able to land one. I ended up just taking a job anywhere. I didn’t really care what it was at the time as long as I wouldn’t be bringing stress home with me. The more time went by, the better I began to feel and I was eventually full of energy and dreams again. I had always wanted to work overseas, so that’s what I focused on chasing. I was thrilled when I landed my English teaching job in Japan a year later, and I truly loved working and living there, but I could feel my old enemy stalking me in the dark corners of my mind, waiting for an opportunity to strike. Eventually it won again. It wasn’t because of the job, but because I was being constantly overly criticized by my boss about things I had no control over, like my American accent (the previous teacher had a British accent). That wasn’t the only ridiculous criticism, but suffice it to say, being made to feel completely incompetent on a near daily basis, even though the people who trained me said I was doing a fine job, made it hard to want to continue and I chose to leave the country. I didn’t want to do it, but I felt backed into a corner, consumed by dark thoughts and feeling like I did when I worked in the hospital.

It’s been a while since the last time I had major trouble, but I can feel it creeping back in again. The last few weeks have been rough and I’ve been struggling with motivation to get out of bed every day. After what happened today, I’m going to have to think about making some hard decisions. I’m facing the possibility of temporarily working at a different job location than my current one and I absolutely don’t want to do it, but my feelings about the matter are being invalidated. The way I currently feel, I don’t want to do anything outside of my normal routine. Sticking with a schedule I’m used to is what is going to help me feel better, not being forced into an uncertain situation and being told not to feel a certain way. It’s unfair to tell me not to be frustrated over a lack of control for something I should have a say in.

Anyway, I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me, but maybe if someone is having a hard time, they can realize that other people feel this way, too, and that they aren’t alone.