Is that all you got life? Hit me again!

Sometimes, I look in all the wrong places to try and find happiness, when the first place I should have started looking was within myself.

            Most people that know me, do not truly know me.  This is because I try to keep people at arms length.  I pretend to be an open book sometimes, divulging far too much about my personal life; yet, it is all just superficial information.  Talking superficially is easy; its the deep, emotional connections with people I have a hard time with.  This is because I put on a facade, pretend to be something I was not (and still struggle to be), happy with who I have become.
          People say happiness is a choice, that it doesn't come without fighting for it everyday.  They tell you to "fake it till you make it," so I tried to put on my happy face.  Some days it was easier to put on a show then others.  I could make jokes, smile, and pretend everything was ok, but inside, my demons were telling me otherwise.  You see, I have been battling depression for the past 12 years.  Until recently, this is not information I have divulged to many people.  
         When I was 13, there were a lot of changes going on in my life.  I was kind of a nerd in elementary school, being a perfectionist that had to get A's on every assignment.  Not doing so resulted in tears and panic attacks; failure for me was not an option back then.  When I got to middle school, I realized that school wasn't about academics anymore, it was about socializing and being "popular."   Although I wasn't a loner by any means, I had had the same group of girl friends for the majority of elementary school.  I have always been a bit shy (one of my many insecurities is the fear of being rejected), and scared of trying to make new friends .   I have a hard time reaching out to people, and if it were not for the few people who reached out to me, I may have very well been a loner my whole life.
         Anyway, moving on.  As a 12-13 year old girl, I changed my focus from killing myself to get perfect grades, to killing myself to fit it.  I am not actually sure how I transitioned from being a "nerd" to "popular," but it seemed to happen almost overnight.  I went from spending my time on homework to spending all my free time either on AOL instant messenger or with my new "popular" friends.  I now spent a lot of time on my appearance, and started to wear make-up.  At this same time, my chest began developing, making me attractive to the opposite sex.  Although I had had little crushes before, at the end of the eighth grade was when I got my first real boyfriend, which introduced me to an entirely new world.  I started having, well, sexual feelings that I did not know how to handle.  I began questioning if I was pretty enough, skinny enough, and worthy of love.  I began breaking rules, something that I would have never dreamed of even months before.  Basically, I started questioning my identity.  I went from focusing on learning and developing myself intellectually, to becoming a superficial want-to-be beauty queen.  Things changed even more for me just a few short months later.
          My parents decided it was time to move from our tiny 3 bedroom rambler to a custom made two story home in Cedar Hills.  I was devastated.  Everything I knew and had worked for I felt was being ripped away from me.  I had just become popular, desired by a boy, and was supposed to start high school in a few months (High school in Provo School District includes 9th grade).  I was now going to be far from my friends (when you can't drive 20 minutes away is a far distance) and boyfriend, going to go to a new junior high, and have to make a new group of friends (I had also just started ballroom dancing at my middle school, and was upset I would not be able to be on the Provo High Ballroom team).  I had also made some "mistakes" by the LDS church's standards, which I was feeling pretty guilty about.  Needless to say, I was having a rough time.
        After a few months, things weren't really improving. I was bitter and angry at my parents, felt bad about myself for sins I had committed, and was really lonely.  I had made a few friends, but my parents could tell I was still very unhappy, and decided it could possibly be depression.  They decided it was best to take me to a doctor to decide whether I was just going through a rough time adjusting to my new life, or if it was something more serious.  In 2001, prescribing children/teenagers antidepressants was extremely common, and so after the doctor asked me a few questions about my feelings, he told me and my parents that I had a chemical imbalance in my brain, which was why I felt so depressed.  At age 14, I would never have thought to question a doctor's- whom is supposed to be a medical professional- diagnosis.  Although my parents were a little skeptical at first, they filled the prescription, and I began taking them every night.  Although doctors usually recommend therapy with taking medication for the best results, therapy is expensive, and after a brand new house, not something we could really afford.  Also, after a while I started showing signs of improvement, so we all felt therapy was unnecessary.  In hindsight, my "improvement" may have been the fact that I had again become "popular" and desirable to boys at my new school, making me feel less alone and more accepted.  But, after a few short months, I was in a rebellious, self destruct mode.
          It is not really a secret that I have struggled with what I believed in my entire life, especially relating to the LDS church.  I can remember even as a child fighting with my parents during scripture study and FHE.  I simply did not want to do it, for whatever reason.  Once I was a teenager, I didn't want to do anything that was church related.  I was forced to go to church and young women's activities, or else faced being punished by being grounded/ other privileges being taken away from me.  So I went, but not without a fight.  My sophomore/junior years of high school were at the peak of my rebellion, and I began skipping class, and engaging in unchaste activities.  I was extremely unhappy with my life, and felt like I did not deserve to be happy because of the choices I had made.  There were a few people, which I hold very dear to my heart, that helped me see that I was worthy of being happy, and helped me turn my life around.  By my senior year, I was a completely different person.  I became the Laurel's president, started dancing competitively, had a new group of really awesome friends, and "had a missionary."  Things were going pretty well, although I did have a hard time because the boy I loved had just left for two years, until I got really sick. 
          The doctors were not really sure what was wrong with me.  I had sores all over my tongue and gums, and everything hurt to eat (I remember trying to eat a banana and it burning). I barely ate anything for two weeks, and lost 13 pounds in that time.  I have had body images issues for years, as a lot of women do, and I remember loving the feeling of being so skinny (Mind you, I was already really small to begin with).  After that, I was living on caffeine and junk food, but luckily metabolism and dancing helped me stay thin.  I always felt extremely tired and had headaches daily, probably a combination of the lack of actual food, caffeine, and the antidepressants.  After I recovered from my illness, I returned to school, but was overwhelmed with all I had to make up in my absence.  (Side note- I had mono when I was 12, and the doctors said it may have come back my senior year, which made me even more fatigued.  I would go to school, park in the parking lot, and sleep half of the day in my car so my parents didn't know I was missing classes.)  I was not on track to graduate, due to my rebellious sophomore and junior year where I failed a lot of classes, as well as missing classes due to being sick.  My counselors told me I would have to do "packets" to make up for my failed classes, which would be like adding extra classes to my regular class load.  After my illness, it was too much for me to handle, and I checked out.  Most people don't know this about  me, but I actually did not graduate with my class.  After graduation, I had to do somewhere around 30 packets to be able to graduate higschool.  I finally completed them a year and a half later, just 1 week before UVSC's spring semester started.  I decided within that week to start my first semester of college, and hurried and registered for classes.  I was not prepared in the least to start college mentally, emotionally, or physically.  
            A few weeks into the semester, I broke up with my boyfriend whom my young 19 year old self thought I was going to marry.  I felt like a train had hit me.  I could not function, and being unprepared for college and going through a break up sent me spiraling into another deep depression.  I failed every class that semester.  
           Luckily, there has always been one thing in my life that has kept me somewhat sane even during my darkest depressive episodes: dance.  It is the one thing that lets me express myself, without everyone knowing how I am really feeling on the inside.  It's an escape from my problems, if even just for a few minutes or hours.  I danced a lot during the next few months, but then after losing my partner, decided to quit.  Self destruct mode started happening again.  Without dance, I had no outlet, or form of exercise.  I gained my freshman 15, and felt worse about myself than ever (it didn't help that I had an asshole of a boyfriend that forced me to go to the gym and would be repulsed by me if I ate certain things in front of him). After we broke up, I decided it was time to try the school thing again.  This time, I decided I was going to really give it my all.  I declared myself a ballroom major and started knocking out my classes they had sequenced for me.
         I had a rocky start and failed a class or two, but by my second semester, I was doing pretty well.  I made the UVU ballroom tour team, and was taking a lot of dance classes as well as working full time.  I had no time to spare, but I was happier then  I had been in a long time.  I was in the best shape of my life, and mentally and emotionally feeling pretty stable.  Then I met a boy who kind of turned my world upside down.
         I had never really considered not being LDS even though I always struggled believing and practicing the doctrines.  I went to church to feel better about myself, to be socially accepted, and because it was what it was what everyone told me to do to make myself happy.  At this time, I was more active and engaged in the church then ever.  I went every week to church, and to most of the activities.  Although I still struggled with some things, I felt a lot happier being there then I was before.  But, there was just no one that struck my fancy at church.  So, about a month into dancing on the tour team, I became interested in someone, like butterflies in the stomach interested.  The problem was, I shouldn't have been interested according to the church.  He was not LDS, in fact, he was nothing.  He was a philosophy major finding out what he believed, and at the time declared he was a "non-denominational christian" basically.  But, despite what the church said, I fell for him.  We dated for about a year and a half, and in that time, he questioned what I believed in, a lot.  The sad thing is that I felt so strongly that I needed to be LDS and that he did too, but I had no idea why.  He asked me why I believed what I believed and I could not answer him.  About a year into our relationship, he decided to move and asked me to come with him.  I wanted to, but I felt like I had lost myself again, but this time I did not know where to go.  He made me reevaluate my belief system, and I honestly didn't know what I believed anymore.  After we broke up, I was a mess.  I felt my whole life was some kind of a lie because I was practicing something I didn't even know was true.  I stopped going to church, and started trying to find a guy to fill my empty void.
         I found a few, but settled on one and dated him for a year.  I knew from the beginning that I did not want to marry him, but convinced myself, and him, that I did.  I had quit dancing again, and working at a restaurant that has food very high in fat, sugar, and calories, that I was consuming daily.  He was the first guy I dated that was happy with me the way I was, and when I put on weight, he didn't care.  In a period of about 2.5 years, I gained nearly 40 pounds.  I felt and looked awful.  I was embarrassed to see people I knew, and didn't ever want to do anything other then sit around eating cupcakes and watching tv.  After taking a year off school, I decided to go back.  Being a dance major and overweight though is quite hard. Not only did I feel look and feel awful, having that extra weight was really hard on my knees and ankles.  It wasn't until we broke up that I finally started losing some of the weight (mostly because I got bronchitis, but also because I was no longer going out to eat all the time).  That summer, I decided I was done with everything.  School, dance, and church.  I kind of went a little crazy again for a few months until one day I realized how awful doing "bad" things made me feel.  I started going to church again every once in a while, working out, and hanging out with some really amazing girl friends and well as my sister.  This was just over a year ago.
        I felt like I was starting to get to a normal, happy, stable place again and learning to be ok being alone when I unexpectedly met and fell for someone.  This time was different though, because he lived/worked far away and I did not see him often.  This gave me a little more time to focus on myself, especially while he was away.  But, I made the mistake of telling him my insecurities, and like any man, he wanted to help me fix them.  I told him my issues with my body, and about my depression.  I told him I was taking antidepressants, and I could tell he was not happy about that.  He is the type of person who likes to push himself to the max, and consequently wanted me to be the same way.  One day, I ran out of antidepressants.  I had never been off of them for more then 3 days in the 12 years I had been taking them, and I was already starting to feel with discontinuation symptoms that come from going off of them abruptly.  When I told him about this and that I didn't want to go to the doctor to get a new prescription, he simply said "then don't."  I told him that you can't do that, if you go off of them you have to taper slowly or else there could be some withdrawal side effects.   He asked me "is that what the doctor told you?  You know, the one that prescribed you drugs you don't need in the first place?"  
            That statement really hit me.  I had been contemplating getting off my antidepressants for the last few years, because of the side effects, but mostly because I felt they made me have no identity.  As a teenager, you are usually trying to figure out who you are, but I felt that the medication robbed me of that.  I was not sure if I acted a certain way because that is who I really was or if it was the drug talking.  I identified myself as a depressed person who had to take a drug to function like a "normal person."  I used depression as a crutch.  If I failed at something, I would say "oh it's because of my depression, I just couldn't do it.  I am not normal."  Believing you are depressed I think is more debilitating then actually even being depressed.  My boyfriend would tell me all the time that I wasn't depressed, I was just telling myself I was.  I got angry about that, telling him he didn't understand, but when I started telling myself I wasn't depressed anymore, I felt different.  
          It's been nearly six months since being on a drug I didn't really need, and I can say I feel better than ever. I can also say these have been some of the hardest, most emotional months I have ever experienced.  I have had a lot of ups and downs, some good days, some really bad days.  But at least I can now say those days are mine, and not a drugs.  I have a had a good support group to help me when I need them, I've been eating better (although I still have a lot of improvement), been supplementing my diet with amino acids, and vitamins and minerals, and dancing a lot to release feel good endorphins.  School, work, and dance have kept me extremely busy, and have not given me time to be depressed.  Whenever I feel myself slipping back into the darkness, I remind myself how far I have come in already a few short months, and that if I can overcome depression, I can do anything I set my mind to.  I now have goals for my life, which I never really cared to make before.  I am still figuring a lot of things out in my life, and it isn't perfect, but I can honestly say I am on the path to true happiness.  I felt it was time to share my story, so that I can let go of my depression, as well as hopefully help and inspire others to do the same. Depression has a bad stigma associated with it, but I hope after reading this, people will realize there are people in our midst that are really struggling, and instead of judging, try helping and encouraging.  Try and understand what they may be going through, and offer love and support to them.  Without those things, I may have never been able to get off of my antidepressants, and on the road to self discovery.



****If anyone who reads this is struggling with depression, I would love to hear from you and about your experiences.  

****I also just finished a research paper on prescribing antidepressants to children and adolescents, if anyone is interested in reading it, let me know!