I Was Depressed. This Is How I Came Out Of It.
How I went from being depressed to happy and loving once again.
He knocked at the door. It was dark inside and he had to turn on the lights to find me.
He found me sitting in the corner of the room, legs folded and drawn to the knees, with my head dropping on them.
‘You missed a call,’ he said gently, my phone in his stretched hands.
I don’t want to talk to anyone,’ I said.
‘It was Natasha,’ he said, as calm as a silent river.
‘I don’t want to talk to anyone,’ I repeated.
He turned off the light and shut the door behind him.
I sat there in darkness in the corner of the room while my 8 months old baby slept on the bed. Natasha was my closest friend, and I didn’t want to talk to her.
I cried again, feeling hopeless. Hopeless about myself, hopeless about the world, and hopeless about my life. The world held no meaning for me anymore, and this burgeoning feeling of worthlessness resonated in me. Again and again.
My baby was born a few months back and we had moved cities. With no sleep, taking care of the new born, a terribly hectic move, setting up the new home, making sure everything about the baby was perfect, I was a walking dead.
A depressed walking dead.
While we settled down in the new city, I had changed immensely. It was not the same me anymore, smiling, cheerful, bright, always motivated and in high spirits. I was more withdrawn and silent with occasional bouts of a latent anger. Mostly cantankerous and sad, I kept to myself. The most minor things disturbed me, a wrongly placed doormat, or a missing towel, a misplaced pen brought out the worst in me.
My routine with the new born was overwhelming for me. Perennially sleep deprived, I didn’t know what I ate, and when I ate I could only feel the coldness of the food. I would often forget where I had kept my plate because I was always running around finishing tasks of the baby and home. The baby was an extremely light sleeper, and that added to my misery. The slightest sound and he would be up. Once, I took a bite of an apple while the tiny one was sleeping next to me, and that one crunch woke him up.
I needed help with the baby, but I could not rely on my husband. Everything he did seemed irrational to me. Looking back I know there was this motherly instinct of things going wrong that had gripped me, and that made me refuse help from him. While on one hand, I saw him get up each time I woke up at night to feed and clean the baby and silently understood that he was being immensely co-operative, on the other hand, I felt that he would not do things for the baby the way it needed to be.
I was tied and tugged between an anger for him and a love for him, and when I weighed these feelings, anger was on the heavier scale.
My husband, whom I loved more than anyone else, had almost become a stranger to me. Whenever we talked, it was more of a fight. If it was not an explicit one, it was a cold war. While I silently waited for him to come back home from work every evening, I never expressed my happiness on seeing him. All the warmth of my happy home had suddenly been stolen by an ugly, icy wind.
‘He has changed. He does not love me anymore,’ I said to myself constantly. There was a time when I almost waited for him to just ask me to leave.
Torn in this cogwheel of negative feelings, I continued to live. Lifelessly.
Now, when I think of his situation back then, my husband had a lot going on. A new job, a new city, a terrible boss to deal with everyday, the daily drive through the conundrum of traffic; life was difficult for him. What made it more difficult was probably a perennially angry and sad wife. However, not once did he let me know of anything that was eating into him because he knew I was struggling with my own situation. He maintained his composure and fought with his time.
Feeling utterly dejected, I had become a loner. I had stopped talking to people. I did not want to receive any calls, nor did I want to call anyone. First, I had no time for it. Second, if I had the time, I had no inclination to talk. I had my shell to withdraw into.
The only person I talked to was my baby who probably could not understand a word of mine, though his smiles and babbles kept me going. I was never unkind to him, and I loved him beyond measure.
My energy levels were flagging. I had no interest in doing anything for myself. I would look at the world hopelessly passing by, days religiously turning into nights, and nights into days, but it never meant anything for me. I had no life of my own beyond being a mother and a wife. I had quit my job to enjoy my time with the baby, but was I really enjoying? The only social life I had was the company of a few other new moms, most of whom may have been equally depressed as I was.
There was this strange conflagration within, and I could not put it out. Neither could I put my finger on it and find out its source. I kept myself inside my shell and saw no signs of hope. Gradually, the shell became stronger than before, and I got sucked into its pit.
What ate into me was this behemoth hopelessness, a woeful discontent arising from lack of a purpose in life (apart from mothering the baby). It made me disinterested in everything. My confidence flagged, my anger seethed, my life became more dismal than ever before, and the apathy of being purposeless ate into me.
I did not want to alienate anyone from me. Instead, I alienated myself from the world. I cried to go back to the girl I was, the girl I had been, and the girl that was lost. I craved to be me. Crying became a routine. Evenings, nights, mornings-I could cry anytime. I could cry when angry, I could cry when sad. Crying would give me terrible headaches, but I did not stop crying.
There were moments when I looked at the mirror and could not see myself anymore. It was definitely not me, it was an entirely different odious person. There was this repulsive, angry woman screaming at me from within the mirror telling me what a worthless person I had become. A person with no meaning to her life. A lifeless person in a lifeless mess.
On the positive side, my husband tried to be consistent in his tenderness towards me. He never stopped trying to help me, or show his love for me which made me feel that maybe I would not have to leave the house. My coldness towards him and towards life in general gradually saw the warmth of the sun. I started to be contemplative of my situation.
Gradually, I could understand the riddling new person I was turning into. I did not want to be that person. I wanted to go back to being me.
In moments of calm and peace, I dug into myself. I wrote and wrote trying to figure out what was wrong with me. Reading up online also helped. It was not very long when I understood that I was depressed. It may have been postpartum depression which prolonged more than it intended to. I did not give myself a chance to be stamped as clinically depressed, but I could understand that behavioural depression was the root cause of the situation in my life. However, I did not come across as depressed to anyone outside my home. Depression doesn’t always ‘show’ in a particular way.
While I was also considering seeing a psychologist myself, I tried to be stronger and find out ways to be happier on my own first.
The most important step for a depressed person is to know and acknowledge that he or she is depressed. That done, half the battle is won.
I had already won half of my battle.
The other half of the battle was living through my condition and also pushing myself against it. Ironically, I was the victim, and I was the therapist.
What made it easy was the knowledge that the ugly demon inside me could raise its head at any time. I had to be cautious about myself. Therefore, I took on the daunting task of handling this demon. With a shaky gumption, I wrote, talked to myself, and sought help from my husband to come out of my condition.
Writing out to trace the root cause of sorrow:
The first step I took and that helped me was to write and talk to myself regularly. Writing out my feelings and asking a ‘why’ to each of my negative feelings cleared out my jumbled mind.
Whenever I was sad or angry or crying, I wrote about my emotions. I wrote a ‘Why’ next to every negative feeling I had, and answered that ‘Why’ honestly. That helped me trace my steps to the root cause of my extreme emotional outbursts. The series of the questions I asked myself finally brought me to the answers.
Once the cause for the mental maelstrom was clear, I tried to reason out the solution with myself.
Here is an example:
I was angry in the morning. Why? — The towel was missing from the bath.
Was that a terrible thing to happen, the towel missing? — No.
Was that the only cause of anger? — No.
What was the other cause? — Him pointing it out that towels are always missing from the bathroom.
What can be the solution to this? — Keeping more than one towel in the bathroom itself.
Is there any other cause of anger? — Yes.
What is it? — I am not working.
Any more? — I want to sleep.
What else is eating into me? — I don’t feel anyone understands my worth. I don’t really get any ‘me’ time.
I continued this writing exercise for every bout of anger and subsequent crying that I had. It was essentially a way of talking to an imaginary me and the cranky me.
Gradually, I noticed a set of reasons repeatedly showing up in the results:
1. No ‘me’ time
2. Being sleep deprived
3. Not being financially independent
4. No breaks during the day or week (more or less similar to #1)
Logically, if I could work on these reasons, my life could be better.
If I can be honest, this first step I took was definitely not easy. Trying to measure out my extreme emotions, writing about them, questioning my own actions, and trying to find out the solution was daunting. I would write the questions, and I would answer honestly without being biased.
Playing the role of the therapist when you are the victim is almost an unthinkable task. However, my end goal was extremely clear-I wanted to be the happy person I was. I had to come out of my insipid life. Nothing could come stop me from going back to who I was . Consistency with the exercise was the key to achieve positive results. Not losing my track was another key.
Asking for help:
The next step for me was asking for help. A lot of times, asking for help doesn’t hurt. It shows your strength and willingness to live. Being a rational person generally, I talked to my husband openly and asked him to help me out of my situation. I was sure if this didn’t help, I would visit a doctor. Not surprising, it helped!
Open Communication:
Asking for help makes me point out another truth of life: communicating openly with a close person. If you don’t have a close friend to talk to, it is always advisable to see a therapist.
For me, the closest person had always been my husband. I had been in an emotional disarray, however, he was the only person I could feel comfortable talking to. I explained my emotional state to him. Talking to him not only made me feel lighter but also cleared out a lot of the toxic air that had accumulated between us.
We spent more time together. He was immensely patient with me, understanding my needs, and tried to offer help for the results of my writing exercises. This is what we decided to work on together:
- I wanted a few free minutes of normal adult social life. We decided to go out on weekends.
- I craved for moments of being me. I desperately wanted a break from my schedules and needed to spend time with myself. We tried to work out a schedule so I could get my free time. That also gave him ample time to bond with the growing child. We shared the workload of handling the baby.
- I was not earning any money. Being an extremely financially independent woman all my life, that one point had been eating into my mind. He explained to me over and over again how he could help with that until I got back to work. We worked out an action plan which helped.
- I needed more sleep. I tried to work out a night routine to get me through the next day seamlessly.
The man also got me an iPod. I tried to spend some time everyday listening to music. It magically calmed me down. A little dose of happy music every morning kept me happy for most part of the day. I was surprised to even find myself humming after years!
Gradually, I could feel myself happier and less angry. I did not have at least 5 crying episodes a week. I was smiling more and talking to more people. I did take my breaks and came back to the baby a happier mom. I started reading again. I gave away my maternity clothes, got new clothes and wore them on weekdays even when I did not go out anywhere. Looking good gave me a new confidence.
This self-help way of handling my situation was extremely time consuming. I suffered for about 2 years before realizing my condition, and my way of handling it took about six to eight months more! I persisted because I saw results.
Days passed by. Months passed by.
It has been a year since I overcame my depression. Now, after a year of being happy and feeling great about myself, I have the strength to write this. I am confident enough to say that I did for myself what a psychologist would have probably suggested doing in my condition - sharing workload, spending time with family, getting free time for myself, being more communicative. I agree my way of handling it was different, and if my exercises didn’t help, I would have asked for medical help.
Our home is as full of laughter as it was earlier. I have started writing regularly from last May and that has also given me a fresh lease of life. While my strength of mind helped me get to where I am, my husband has been the prime force that has brought me out of the dark phase of my life. Had it not been for him, I would have been waddling in my sorrow even today.
I’ve learned now that mental health is as important as physical health, and if not paid attention to, it can compound beyond measure. The layers of depression vary from person to person, so what worked for me may not work for someone else. However, the most important thing to do is to acknowledge depression and not live in denial of it. Nothing is more torturous than a behemoth depression growing within you and you living with it for fear of social criticism.
I am not ashamed to say I was depressed. I am happy to say that I came out of it stronger than before.
If you’ve ever been in a similar situation as me, or if you’ve liked the story, clap for it so others can find it.
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