Depression

I suffer from depression, something of course I don't like, but I'm not ashamed to admit it. Beginning in adolescence, then through college and beyond, I had what I call garden variety depression - a general sense of unhappiness about my life and myself. I began no see a psychiatrist during my sophomore year in college because I was so torn up inside that I was spending hours a day on my dorm bed curled up in the fetal position. Depression is exhausting; it strips you of energy and enthusiasm. And it's not just about feeling down; it's classified by health professionals as a mental illness.
In my twenties I would have said that depression is something that's kind of in the air - like what was called vapors in the Middle Ages. I know now that it is really about brain chemistry.
In 1996 I suffered a massive stroke, after which I became despondent, obsessing about being disabled and then deciding I wanted to end my life. I had what used to be called a nervous breakdown. My psychiatrist put me in the psych unit ("mental ward") until I could get well enough to return home. She said the reason that people who are suicidal are put in the hospital is so that they will be safe and their medications can be monitored, and adjusted if necessary. I was already taking Effexor, the drug we settled on after I tried - and rejected - Paxil and Zoloft. Dr. F. told me that even though I had a depressive personality before the stroke, I now suffered from post-stroke depression, an entirely distinct clinical diagnosis. I still suffer from it, twelve years after the blood clot lodged in the right parietal lobe of my brain. And even though with the help of therapy and medication I have achieved some degree of normalcy, every once in a while the bottom drops out again - as it did last night.
I don't know what happened, but after I went to bed I couldn't stop obsessing about my life being of little worth (note: this is not the same as feeling suicidal. I KNOW what that feels like and I know to get help if that happens). The ironic thing is that just yesterday I received praise of the highest order from several different people I interact with personally and professionally. They just think Grant is the greatest, but inside I don't feel so great - I just want to crawl in a hole and hide. I ended up lying in bed awake all night until 7:00 a.m., at which time I called a friend and told him how rotten I felt. He asked what about, and I ended up spouting off about how I was in the best physical condition of my life in 1996. I worked out every day on my lunch hour, using Cybex machines for muscle, lap swimming for aerobics, and tennis for the sheer fun of it. And there I was, playing sets on the rooftop courts at the Athletic Club at One Cleveland Center, and other men watching me play would actually approach me and ask if I would play them. Since the rule of thumb in tennis, like other sports, is to find someone at or above your level of play, I was obviously being approached by men who either thought I was as good as they were or better than they were. Something like this had never happened in my life before. In sports since junior High I was always the skinny unco-ordinated one who didn't know the rules, would drop the ball, or get killed playing defense. When I quit high school PE to join the tennis team I felt liberated. I practiced and practiced and practiced - and the main friend I played with was a classmate who was just enough better than I was that we both got a good workout when playing matches.
So last night I'm lying in my bed, staring at the ceiling in the dark, and obsessing on my losses instead of focusing on my gains. It was a real bitch. Fortunately I have tools to help me and I know how to use them. So I can say now, twenty four hours after the clouds moved in, I am feeling just enough better to take an Ambien and go to bed, listening to some soft music, wondering what the morning will bring.