Trigger warning- self-harm

I have been diagnosed with depression for the last 26 years. I can barely remember a time when I didn’t have it. Honestly, I probably was depressed since birth. It is just how my brain is wired. I have always been a chronic pessimist, seeing the glass fully empty. I was the one who knew I wasn’t invincible and expected bad things to happen to me. I would stare at happy people and wonder why I wasn’t circuited that way. And then as I aged, I just accepted that I was never going to have a sunny disposition.

In the beginning, my depression started with episodes of major depressive disorder. As a teen, I had MDD because we moved to a different state right before high school. Then came the stress of completing my senior year in high school, followed by beating myself up over a poor semester in college.

Then it morphed. It became postpartum depression bringing anxiety, a new friend, into the mix. At some point, it changed to dysthymia with episodic MDD. Then, it metamorphosed into cyclical depression last year, becoming difficult to treat and adding several bipolar disorder medications to my regime.

I was somewhat stable, let’s say status quo, and then COVID-19 hit, the global pandemic that has made us all feel like we’re living in an episode of the Twilight Zone.

At first, it was my anxiety disorder that took possession of my body. I was worried that I would obtain this novel virus. It was enhanced by my daughter’s anxiety that had her thinking we were all going to contract and die from this coronavirus. It kept me awake as I could not shut my brain off even with 100mg of Trazodone, 100mg of Lamictal, and 300mg of Gabapentin.

Then on April 1st, anxiety departed, and my chronic depression stood center stage. In the cruelest April Fool’s Day prank, I was laid off, except this was no joke. After I got off the phone with my boss, I told my husband I was going on a long walk. I was upset, crying (which is rare for me) and needed to clear my head. I wound my way through many local streets and the educational park. I couldn’t understand why. Yes, I knew on a large scale this was happening everywhere. I knew my company laid off 70% of its workforce and shut the business down for who knows how long.

It was the smaller scale, ‘Why me?!’ that was driving me into the dark abyss. There were four of us in the department who did the same thing. Two of us were let go. Why didn’t I make the cut?! I understood why one of the people in my department stayed, but I couldn’t understand why the other one was there, and I wasn’t. I had excellent reviews, my projects hadn’t been shut down yet, and I was not the last one hired. My husband explained to me that it was probably due to salary and I most likely was making more so to save the company money, I had to go.

But I couldn’t let go of this. It gnawed at my brain. The negative thoughts repeated themselves over and over again:

“You’re useless!”

“You’re worthless!”

“You sucked at your job! Why would they ever keep you?!”

“You’re not needed!”

“You couldn’t hold on to your job. Are you stupid?”

The guilt and self-loathing are the worst. I now feel as if I am not contributing anything to the family anymore. My income was almost equal to my husband’s. In my head, we are now going to lose all our savings, including the savings we created for emergencies, you know, like for a global pandemic! I just never thought we would have to use it. I have applied for unemployment and miraculously have not had to wait long as others have.

But the guilt is still there. I have self-harmed several times since April 1st because I feel I deserve the pain. The loathing got worse when my coworker texted me for some information regarding one of my projects (the one who was hired after me). That day I had strong suicidal ideations. If I had a plan, who knows what I would’ve done. Luckily, I did not act on them and virtually met with my psychiatrist the next day, and my therapist the day after.

It scares me. It scares me to not have anything to ‘do.’ I’m petrified of how my thoughts may worsen. I thought my depression that lasted all of 2019 was bad. But this this has gotten worse and in such a short amount of time.

I try to avoid my former coworkers because I am afraid of how this may trigger me. It’s hard to do sometimes as my boss calls me weekly to ‘check-in.’ Check-in on what? How sucky my life is right now? He called last Friday right after I found out that my uncle passed away due to COVID-19. Talk about triggers. I was done. I seriously did not know how I was going to survive anymore, pondering the question, ‘What else could go wrong?!’. Because, you know, I cannot view anything as a positive.

Both my psychiatrist and therapist suggested I create a schedule that way I am not dwelling on the negative thoughts. I am working on several of them now: One for rainy weekdays, one for sunny weekdays and one for weekends. I logically know this will help me. When I have things to do, I can easily get out of my head. My negative thoughts do not stay away all day. They flutter in and out like a butterfly seeking just the right nectar. For the most part, though, I can tell them, my Inner Bitch, to shut up.

I am not sure what the next few weeks or months will bring. I am sure I will be riding this rollercoaster for a while, with a few contently lucid climbs, many spiraling downfalls, and some corkscrews constantly circling my brain.

I have to hold on for the ride and not let go.

Stephanie Paige has struggled with chronic Depression since age 14 and Generalized Anxiety Disorder since age 34, with Postpartum Depression, Postpartum Anxiety and PTSD mixed in there. She is the mother of one beautiful teen daughter. With the strength of her husband, parents, child and furbabies, she has survived 8 bouts of Major Depression and has become a huge activist for Mental Health. She wants to let others know they are not alone and that is her striving force to sharing her story. She advocates through words on her blog, spaigewrites.com & Stigma Fighters. Recently publishing her first book, Rising From the Ashes, you can also find her contributions in Stigma Fighters Anthologies II, III, & IV.