My Midlife-Existential-Seasonal-Situational-Depression
Lord jeeeeesus I hope I survive this depression phase of my life so I can fondly look back at it as my Bat Shit Crazy phase and have it be just another crappy memory.
Reader Discretion Warning: This isn’t a feel good post. You might want to make make yourself a chip sandwich because I’m morose as hell right now.
The last few weeks have been awful. My 8 week assessment at Synaptic didn’t go as well as I’d hoped. I seem to have hit some kind of wall, progress-wise.
Depression has clothes-lined me. I’m so exhausted, I wasn’t even this fatigued when I had a newborn at home.
I’ve missed some home sessions because I simply can’t get up to do them, which probably feeds into the depression.
I’m so tired that I did some math the other day: if the house were to start on fire, I’m less than a mile from the fire hall. I’d most likely be fine to stay lying on the couch until the fire fighters arrived to carry me out.
I had another clinic session yesterday and I told Jill that I’m missing sessions, I feel like I’m not improving anymore, I’m depressed, and I’m frustrated. I fell two days ago and now I have a sprained, black and purple thumb. I’ve just had enough, especially when it all seems pointless.
Jill said that it’s not just me, many PoNS clients hit a wall around week 8 or 9. That made me feel a bit better, because right now I feel like I’ve wasted everyone’s money and ruined my mental health for nothing. I also know that’s partly the depression talking.
Cam points out that I’m better than I was a year ago, and I have had small improvements.
But the improvements indeed seem small and I’m still disabled most days, which frustrates me.
I tried to jog yesterday with supervision and it didn’t go well because Left Leg didn’t feel like participating. I want to be able to run so bad. Some days, the good days, I’ve thought that I could if I tried. I haven’t tried because I don’t want to reinforce bad movement patterns, so I thought I’d wait until the Synaptic experts decided I was ready.
Yesterday didn’t go well, but Jill and Becca played Chariots of Fire as requested for my 24 second jogging attempt and that was awesome.
My clinic sessions at Synaptic are a high point. As hard as they are they’re a lot of fun because of the staff but the rest of the time, my life is pretty monotonous. It’s like the most gawd-awful version of Groundhog Day and that wasn’t even a movie I enjoyed.
Am I depressed because I’m so fatigued? Am I fatigued because I’m so depressed? Is depression an MS symptom because of the structural changes to the brain, or because everything about MS sucks so there’s plenty to be depressed about?
I’m also dealing with hot flashes, night sweats, and insomnia which I’m sure isn’t contributing to the fatigue at all.
Also, I love it that the sun has barely risen at 830 and starts setting again like, 34 minutes later. I love it when it’s dark at 430, honest. Definitely no seasonal depression over here.
I’m also really enjoying the Covid lock down, since I’ve barely left my house for 14 months anyway.
Everything sucks right now but underneath the melancholy is grief.
My old life is gone. Who I was is gone.
I’m not a dancer anymore, or a weight-lifter. I would barely be considered a hiker. I’m not a business-owner. I couldn’t afford to keep my practice permit, so I’m not a paramedic right now. I’ll never compete in dance again, or fitness. I couldn’t run another 5k even if I wanted to. Long, strenuous hikes are a thing of the past. Moving with grace, speed, or agility is no longer something I can do. I don’t walk like a confident, in-charge woman anymore. Plenty of days I can barely walk at all.
My business is ruined, I lost that too. I’m not really self-employed anymore, because I think you have to earn money to pay your bills to be able to say that so I guess I’m just unemployed, jobless. I have no future earning potential, no career options, limited employability. I’ll never again work on an ambulance, and being an advanced care paramedic dovetails nicely into….nothing. I’m only qualified to be a paramedic, and I can’t physically do that anymore so now what?
I’m drowning in grief because other than my wonderful husband, my good friends, and a brain full of lesions, I have nothing to show for my life despite my very best efforts.
Everything I worked for, gone. I spent my entire adult life caring for and serving others, and I have nothing to show for it. I’m bankrupt and disabled, so that’s fantastic. Just what I always dreamed of as a little girl.
I don’t have the resources, financial, physical or otherwise, to rebuild my life again.
I can’t even shrug and say, “Well, at least I’ve got my health.”
Lost that too, despite my best efforts to eat right and stay fit. I’m super glad I ate all the broccoli and logged all the gym hours because that really seems to have paid off. My health went to shit 3 weeks before my 40th birthday. I’m really not that impressed with my forties so far.
But I’m super thrilled that I’m healthy enough that I could easily have at least another 40 years of increasing disability in front of me! #blessed
What also sucks is I can’t even look back and think, gosh I wish I hadn’t taken my business/career/money/financial stability/health for granted. That’s not a lesson I needed to learn.
Over the years, I often reflected how grateful I was for lots of things. I was grateful for my health and my physical capabilities. I appreciated my business that let me pay my bills for the year working only 6 months full-time.
Everything I valued about myself and my life, that I’d been grateful for, gone. Plucked away by a spiteful Universe for something I did in a past life, I guess.
It sure makes me wary about ever being grateful for anything again. One of the things that’s keeping me up at night lately is wondering how I’m going to be widowed.
If you’ve read this far, it’s pretty obvious I’m not in the best of mental places.
I’ve been coping recently by watching Schitt’s Creek and eating chip sandwiches in between naps. Healthy? Not at all. But healthy coping mechanisms and good decisions didn’t seem to stop me from landing here so extra chips and a pickle, please.
I’m normally firmly on team Cynical, but not usually depressed. I keep telling myself that this too shall pass. I’ll at least feel better once the clocks move ahead in March. I’ll feel better once I get my Covid vaccine. My mood will lift when I can meet my friend in a restaurant for sushi again, when I can at least go for bike rides since it seems like that might be the only way I’ll be doing anything active for the rest of my life. But it seems I can go to the grocery store without needing a cane now, so I guess I should be ‘grateful’ for that?
Hey, I can still see (with strong corrective lenses) and I can go get milk without needing a walking aid for now and I don’t need adult diapers yet.
If life is all about meeting a really low bar, I’m nailing it.
Cam and I have talked about it several times. There’s a lot going on, in that there’s nothing going on. The days are short, we’re on lock down, there’s a pandemic, I’m broke, I’m tired, I’m peri-menopausal, I’m eating chip sandwiches for 85% of my diet, sleeping poorly, and all of that is probably part of the problem. Could the depression be making the MS worse for right now? Is that even a thing?
It’s also a possibility my new med is helping me feel this crappy, so maybe going off the med for awhile might be an option just to see. It’s also entirely possible the medication has nothing to do with any of it and my overall body pain of the last few weeks is courtesy of depression and being fairly immobile. Still a vicious cycle, because I’m in pain which will feed depression and being in pain makes me want to move as little as possible, which might be contributing to the pain….
Sigh.
I like to stay solution-oriented, so I’m hydrated and napped, but maybe I need to eat some more vegetables and do a little yoga. We’ve wondered if maybe after the last few years of one shitty thing after another (even before Covid) my psyche has just finally had enough for awhile. Like my bestie said the other day, “You’ve got every right to be depressed after everything that’s happened the last couple years.”
Yes. Yes I do, dammit. Thank you. Just that statement made me feel better, too.
But this too shall pass. I’m not going to feel this way forever but I have a few reasons for pouring my current misery all over my blog.
The first is, there’s no handbook called “So You Woke Up Disabled.” If there’s anyone else in a comparable situation and they’re doing really well for a long time but then they hit a wall of, “Wow I can’t believe how much this sucks and I’m tired of the suckage and how sucky the suckness is…”
I think that’s okay. Maybe it’s even a normal part of the grieving process, coming to terms with the end of your old life and your old self. Humans are really good at eventually adjusting to new normals even when it’s under protest.
The second is, I just have no interest in portraying that life is spectacular and neuro rehab is easy because I’d only be doing that for the benefit of others and I’m pretty over doing inauthentic things that tire me out just for the benefit of others.
Also, wouldn’t it be great if I word-vomit my moroseness all over this blog and Murphy’s Law will kick in and I’ll be feeling much better within hours of hitting publish!
Sometimes it’s better to speak the truth about the crappy feelings because to speak on them is to take away their power. Like turning on the lights so the cockroaches scatter.
I managed to jog twice today for thirty seconds both times. It wasn’t stellar but it was better than yesterday. It went to crap after two intervals so I stopped before I died from falling off the treadmill.
Today was better than yesterday, hopefully tomorrow will be better than today. And at the end of the day…
I’ll always have chip sandwiches.
https://www.nationalmssociety.org/Treating-MS/Medications/Ocrevus
