Things aren’t going quite so well. I love my job, and I love that I can spend so much time with J and L these days, but overall, my life is falling apart, and I hate it. As you may or may not know, I have been prescribed a dosage of anti-depressants, and I am seeing a therapist on a regular basis over the school year, to help me to work through the difficulties I have been struggling with since high school... This year I was formally diagnosed with Depression, an issue that my counsellors have suspected for over four years, which I consistantly brushed off until recently.
In the few months that I’ve been working on this, I feel I have made a significant amount of progress. I still have a long way to go, but acknowledging the fact that there was a problem, and seeking help was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I’ve learned the importance of taking the time and space to care for myself, and the importance of putting myself first. I’ve been working on widening my perspective and learning from various experiences, rather than just getting upset about them.
Since I’ve come back home, however, staying on track has been very difficult for me. I realized that over the past few years, I enjoyed coming home because I was forced into an environment where I had no choice but to “put on a happy face” and pretend everything was fine; to go through the motions. It was easier to act like things were going well if I didn’t have the option of facing the reality of how I actually felt. After taking the plunge and looking the problem squarely in the face, so to speak, it is very hard to come back to this atmosphere of putting on a stiff upper lip, and presenting a strong, composed face to the world.
After having struggled for the past two months to reconcile the expectations of my family to go out and act “normal” with my personal goals and the things that I consider important, such as taking care of myself, and facing up to the reality of the situation, I recently had a complete emotional breakdown. There has been quite a substantial amount of tension building up between my parents and me for some time now. I don’t feel that they have been very supportive of me as I try to work through this difficult time in my life - rather than encouraging me to tackle the root issue, all they seem to be able to do is to tell me to "snap out of it." They have made me feel very guilty about the whole issue, as well, which is extremely counter-productive and has made the whole ordeal much more difficult.
Things have been getting increasingly difficult as the summer has progressed, and earlier this week, a relatively minor disagreement with my parents proved to be the “last straw” and turned into an ugly, messy hysterical fit. I threw a full out tantrum, complete with kicking, screaming and crying. It reached a point at which I was lashing out with physical violence, and threatening to move out of the house. I bit my father, scratched my sister's arm until I drew blood, and tried to push my mother down the stairs. I had even packed up some things, and called my boyfriend to ask him to come and get me. I didn’t have a plan or anything. I just wanted to get out. A came over, and was able to eventually calm me down, and convince me that my leaving home would only make matters worse.
Upon further conversations with him, he also helped me to see the importance of finding someone to talk to here, to help me to find techniques to get through the next few months. I have spent a lot of time thinking about this and while I can’t change the way my family addresses certain situations, I CAN work on the way I react to certain situations. It's hard, but I can do it. I have to do it. It's the only way.
