I often wonder what my life would've been like if I didn't spend the last twenty years or so trying desperately to ignore the signals that flashed: Houston, we have a problem. 

When I was seven or eight years old, I would lie in the dark, listening to the radio, unable to sleep for worrying about school.  Tears slid down my temples and into my ears, wetting my hair.  Midnight after midnight I cried myself to sleep, tautly coiled, tightly wound.  Surely this wasn't normal?  

I was first diagnosed with clinical depression at age twelve.  From there, I went to a string of therapists, which felt like punishment to me.  I cried, a lot.  I was silent or monosyllabic as they tried to draw me out.  I absolutely loathed them.

In high school, I was put on antidepressants; I took them religiously for about six months until I grew tired of not feeling much of anything at all.  So I went off the drugs without informing my parents or doctor that I was doing so. 

I don't remember much about that.

Soon afterward, I started cutting myself with razorblades - silly child that I was, I thought I had invented it!  This was the early nineties, and I'd never heard of anyone else doing so.  Funny, but I can't even remember where I got the blades.  It hurt, yes, sometimes agonizingly so - but it allowed me to concentrate on something other than the howling anguish that threatened to overtake me.  It made me feel better, and who can resist something like that?  One of the last times I sliced my tender inner arms, I swiped at my skin and thought I'd missed; turns out, I cut so deeply it took a moment to begin bleeding - and then it spurted.  That scar, never stitched, measures about three inches long by one inch wide.  I used to wear long sleeves even in the summer heat, and only years later did I wonder why nobody even questioned it. 

Depression is something I've been struggling with for decades now.  Sometimes it's situational, as it was when I got my heart absolutely shattered by falling in love and it ending so terribly; sometimes it's just my own fucked-up brain chemistry.  I've always resisted defining myself by it.  I often wonder how I'd be diagnosed if I were a child now; I've occasionally suspected that I might be somewhere on the autism spectrum, and who knows what else? However, I've always strenuously resisted the idea that something might be "wrong" with me. 

I suppose my family's accustomed to it by now, but you should've seen my poor brother-in-law when I was having a particularly bad time of it at Christmas dinner one year; I sat there, gulping a glass of wine, tears streaming down my cheeks, and my whole family simply pretended it wasn't happening.  He asked my sister about it later - "She was sitting there crying, and you all just ignored her!  Why?"  Why indeed - they're inured. It's nothing out of the ordinary. 

After many false starts, and taking myself off drugs every time they seem to start working, I'm back on antidepressants.  I would like to find an anti-anxiety drug that works for me, as well.  Don't get me wrong; I'm not stigmatizing these at all, and I don't keep it a secret that I'm taking them; I just refuse to actually believe that anything might actually be wrong with me (until I'm suicidal, slashing my wrists, etc.)   

I don't want to be a victim.  I don't want to blame anyone or anything for my problems.  I sort of want to dismiss it all, but that never helps.  I'll just muddle through as best I can...like anyone else does, every day, all the time.