A Message From Michael: I try and advocate as best as I can for Mental Health Awareness and I’m grateful to be in a position I am where not only can I share my own stories, but share others as well.

Mental Illness needs to be talked about more. I’m not just talking about from the people who struggle with it. We do have great discussions about it but day after day, month after month, year after year, we have over 250 million people struggle with different forms of depression. And yet, there’s still so much about it we don’t know. There are stigmas we are still trying to break down and that needs to happen before we can start to bring about everlasting change.

So I return to my original statement, we need to talk about this. So I present to you a very special blog written by someone who has their own experience with depression. It’s a strong one. It’s a tough one. It’s raw, but most mental health illness stories are. We should be congratulating people for sharing. We do so with other illnesses when they’ve survived or we’ve even supported when they’ve slipped into relapse again. And so with congratulations, a hug and a pride in sharing this story, I present to you:

Guest Blog #6: L.H. Tupper

I’ve dealt with depression through most of my adult life. I hardly remember my early 20’s from self medicating. Alcohol and one night stands, feeling something but at the same time nothing at all. I never really talked about it, I didn’t have the words for it. No one around me seemed to be going through the same things I was. And when I did try to talk about it no one understood. I once tried to explain to a friend what was happening, what I was feeling. They got upset that I wasn’t sounding like myself and I became angry that they weren’t listening. That was the last time I talked to that friend and the last time I tried to talk about my depression. 

I couldn’t sleep but at the same time all I did was sleep. I missed college classes and couldn’t keep up with the work. I eventually dropped out because it all became too much. I’ve tried going back a few times but it always triggered depressive episodes so I gave up. I’d wander around campus at night when I lived in the dorms. Once I got my own place I’d sit at my kitchen table all night and write poetry while chain smoking. I’d ignore the dog’s pleas to go outside to use the bathroom and let him pee on the carpet because I couldn’t get out of bed. I’d try to make up for ignoring him with treats and toys. 

In 2009 I found out I was pregnant. Because of my medical history I had assumed I couldn’t get pregnant, doctors always told me it would be hard for me to get pregnant. But there I was sitting at my kitchen table, drinking a bottle of wine, smoking and staring at the at home pregnancy test. I was 23, I thought that maybe this was the thing that would change who I was, maybe this would push me out of who I had been. I was of course very wrong. Friends I had no longer came around, and everyone had an opinion on I should do, have an abortion or give it up for adoption. But I wanted the baby, it could have been my only chance to have a baby. I quickly realized that I wasn’t going to have a support system through this pregnancy. I tried to quit smoking but I couldn’t. My OBGYN prescribed me antidepressants but all I could think was taking the whole bottle. I’d sometimes take 2 or 3, just to see if anything would happen. So I stopped taking them and stopped thinking about it. I still slept all day and was up all night. I sat watching movies and smoking, wondering what damage I was doing to the little baby moving around in my stomach. Wondering if I was going to be able to care for him, if I would be able to love him. He was born with a cleft palate. Was that my fault? I don’t know, but he was healthy otherwise. He stayed in the NICU for 5 days, they sent me home without him. And then I finally brought him home. It was just me and him. I had to hold him in a certain position so that he was able to drink from a bottle. I was so tired. I took him to the er once because I was so exhausted I didn’t know if I could keep caring for him. But they sent me home again. I moved home with my mother, I couldn’t do it alone. A month after he was born, his father committed suicide. 

For the first few years of his life I went through not being able to sleep to only sleeping. I kept hitting a wall and just ramming myself into it over and over again. Everything was so hard and foggy all the time. I was angry all the time. I had thoughts of hitting things, people. Noises were all too loud. And then the second baby came. A little girl. I was married now and had the help I needed with a newborn. But on top of my already existing depression, postpartum depression was sinking in. I stopped cooking, (my husband use to be a sous chef so it wasn’t a huge problem)  I kept pressing the knife into my skin. Not enough to cut myself, but enough that it hurt and turned my skin red. The pain always deterred me enough not to go further. I can’t handle physical pain even though I was constantly in pain. Everything hurt. Everything started to blur together. I can’t remember much from her first year of life. 

And then came the day I thought about throwing myself down the stairs and stood at the top of them for an hour trying to will myself over the edge. I had fallen down our stairs before, I knew what it felt like to try and catch myself to minimize the fall. But what would happen if I didn’t try? I called my doctor. I told her how I felt, about the big scary thoughts I was having, it was much easier to talk about it this time. She actually listened to me. She gave me a prescription for a bottle of little white pills. I started taking them, once a day, everyday. I started to feel better, less clouded. Side effects happened, that was expected. My sex drive had completely disappeared. I talked with my husband about it and to my surprise he understood and was fine with it. My being alive and healthy mattered to him more than the sex we use to have. 

One of the side effects of these little white pills was addictive behavior. I already have an addictive personality. It increased my alcohol intake. My want and need for it. Which became scary for me. One day, I mixed a shot of rum in my coffee. I shouldn’t have had a drink on an empty stomach. My stomach was mostly empty those days though. The baby was napping, the older child was playing happily and watching tv. I realized that I made a mistake. I couldn’t do anything. So I went to sleep in my son’s bed, because I knew he’d be able to find me there. I woke up to him asking for his play phone and the baby just waking up. I had slept for 2 hours, which only felt like 20 minutes. I threw out the hard liquor and made a promise to myself to limit my drinking. The side effects subsided and I started to feel like an actual person for the first time in my life. It took some time but those little white pills saved my life. I started cooking again. I love cooking. 

My children are now 10 and 5 years old. I sometimes worry about what they will remember of me. Will they remember my drinking too much, crying for seemingly no reason, not having the energy to play with them the way they demanded, yelling when they’ve irritated me in ways that wouldn’t bother anyone else? And, just like the dog, I’ve tried to make up for it with treats and toys. 

I’ve been off antidepressants for almost a year. I got to a place where I didn’t need the medication because of the medication. But I feel myself falling into that place again, the dark place at the bottom of the stairs. It’s become all I can think about. Drinking too much again. So I made the decision to call my doctor and start antidepressants again. For the sake of my children and myself. I’ll be 35 next month and I don’t think I will ever be cured, this will be a lifelong battle for me. And the medication will keep me alive to fight it. 

Thank you, L.H., for sharing your story. Want to thank L.H. Tupper for her brave words? Find L.H. Tupper’s own blogs here. Make sure to like, comment and subscribe! Show that support!

Have your own story you want to share? Drop me a message and share it there. Completely anonymous! Want to be another guest blogger to promote mental health awareness? Let me know there, too!

Thanks again, L.H.!