Prozac in my Cheerios

Please Rate Your Depression

Are you depressed?

You know what I find really helps my depression? Surveys. Filling them out in a stuffy, filled-to capacity waiting room, surrounded by strangers in various stages of mental illness. Strangers that are sitting uncomfortably close to you.

But I digress. Here we go! On a scale of one to ten, just how depressed are you right now?

10) Extremely depressed. Everyday brings us closer to death.

2-9) Somewhat depressed. I can get out of bed, but that's about it. I may or may or not have clean underwear on.

1) Not depressed at all! I'm going skydiving naked!

How did you score? You've never taken one of these surveys before? Lucky you. Well, when I get one of these surveys, I always wonder...how am I supposed to assign a number to how I feel?

There is a comedian who relates an experience in the ER. You may have heard his routine. A nurse asks him to rate his pain on a scale of 1-10. He is at a loss on how to rate his pain. He reasons that a 1 or a 2 is too low, but a 10 is surely too high, so he decides to rate his pain at an 8. To his delight, this results in a good dose of morphine, after which he strolls down the halls shouting "Say eight! Say eight! Happy eight day!"

The problem with trying to rate my depression with a number, is that I can no longer remember a time that I wasn't depressed (or anxious, struggling with panic attacks, low self-esteem, OCD, etc.). I have no baseline of happiness to measure it against. I wake up every morning feeling flat.  Every day is just another day full of tasks to be checked off and completed, before I can finally go home and try to get some sleep before starting the process all over again. How do I rate that? What can I compare it to? Is there some medically accepted standard of happiness being used as a baseline? Did the psychiatric community find some blissfully happy group of people on an island somewhere in the Pacific, and use them as the yardstick for this survey? If so, can they tell me where those people live so I can kill them?

There WAS a time when I felt happy. I have proof.  I have a little poem I wrote in grade school. It's bereft of the sarcasm, pessimism and self-deprecation that have become coping mechanisms and hallmarks of my personality.  I was probably six or seven when I wrote it. It goes something like this:

"I love mommy. I love daddy. I love my sister and my nanny. I am happy."

I don't remember who this person is. I'd like to meet this person again someday.

What changed?

I was a happy kid; very shy and sensitive, a worrier, but with good self-esteem and a positive outlook on life. Until around age nine. Shortly after starting 4th grade, my pale forehead broke-out with cystic red acne. Soon after that, I also needed glasses--I got huge, red, plastic frames. I was already self-conscious. Now I felt like everybody was looking at my face and laughing at me. All the time. I looked in the mirror and felt revulsion. I knew I was ugly and disgusting. The smallest perceived negative comment from a classmate would devastate me.

Around the same time, breaks and recess started slowly transitioning from playtime to real social interaction time. Girls forming cliques and talking about things I had zero interest in. Boys. Boy bands. Clothes. I still wanted to play tag. I felt completely out of my depth and inadequate. I felt like there was something inferior not only about my appearance, but about my personality. I was an easy target for the popular girls--either dismissed as unworthy, or made fun of. Whether they made fun of me to my face or just giggled amongst themselves--it didn't matter. The damage was done. I did not know how to stand up for myself. I didn't have the self-esteem to even try.

By the time I got to middle school I was a very depressed and anxious kid. I always loved school. I was smart. I had friends to play with. But now, I dreaded going to school. We merged with another school and were separated by aptitude--advanced, average, and below average. I was placed in advanced classes, but now I was no longer the smartest kid. Some classes posted test results. The kids were competitive and I struggled. A B- might has well has been an F.

My few friends were dwindling. There was nothing I feared more than breaks and lunch, when I would be forced to look for somebody, anybody I could sit with or talk to. I knew I was a hot mess, but I had no idea how to fix myself. I did not wear the right clothes, or have the right hairstyles. I was still young mentally for my age, and I simply could not keep up socially with the other kids. I just did not fit in anywhere, and I was miserable pretty much all day, every day. I would cry in my room as soon as I got home. I could not understand how my life had changed so much in such a short amount of time, and I felt like I would never be happy again. For the first time, I had thoughts like "It would be better off if you were not here. You are ugly. Nobody likes you. You are a mistake. You should not have been born."

These kinds of thoughts have plagued me ever since. I no longer remember living without them.

Imagine waking up everyday with a really mean person. This person knows you better than anybody else. They know every mistake you ever made, every insecurity, every weakness you have. They keep a detailed list of everything you worry about. And they remind you of all of it, everyday, all day, from the moment you wake up until you finally manage to fall asleep. How exhausted would you be if you had to listen to that person every single day? Would you feel like getting out of bed and leaving the house?

What if you knew every time you walked out the door, somebody was waiting right outside to club you with a bat? Would you ever go out again?