Hello, my name is Simone and I'm not sure I am doing this correctly, as I have never joined a chat room before. I am struggling with recurrent sadness that has escalated in recent years into an isolating and deeply internalized state of being. I have a high functioning and very social job in which I am a leader and am noticing that I am becoming more and more alone in my private life-- intellectually and emotionally isolated. What concerns me is that I seem to have lost the vulnerability I had when I was younger-- the ability to seek out others . It'd hard to express, but I feel a grimness about things-- perhaps this is mid-life. I am 54.
I sometimes feel that I am "done" with life, that the great ambitions are over for me. Though I have so much t be grateful for, I feel deflated, disappointed.
Anyway, I wanted to introduce myself.
My first time on this site
Moderators: Sunlily92, windsong, BlueGobi, Moderators, Astrid
Simone~
I am very glad to meet you. I am 53 years old and am going through the exact same thing. Except that a lot of my depression is brought on by my and my husband's health problems. He was diagnosed about 3 years ago with terminal prostate cancer, and I have severe problems with my back and my knees and 5 or 6 other things. He is on full disability and I am in the process of getting it. I can hardly function in any way, and we don't have the money to have my problems fixed so that I can take proper care of my husband. No friends or family nearby. I feel that my life is all downhill now, that the best has past and I will never get to do those things again, and in a nutshell, I feel like I need to get ready to die. Write my will, throw away or sell most of my "stuff", and just wait to die.
Pretty grim, yes. But what I am saying is that you are not the least bit alone, it may very well be something in our new lowered level of metabolism, or hormones or something that is making us feel this way. I feel just like your description, except that I can't work. The last job I had was sort of like yours - very intense, and I finally got too sick to work and they fired me.
A little more about you: Are you married? Kids? Pets? Hobbies? Health? Meds? Friends? Etc. etc..
We will help you through this transition. I know it's a transition, because the 50s are notorious for being the hardest years, after teenagehood that is, and the 60s are better.
The people here are really nice.
Please write back.
a5
I am very glad to meet you. I am 53 years old and am going through the exact same thing. Except that a lot of my depression is brought on by my and my husband's health problems. He was diagnosed about 3 years ago with terminal prostate cancer, and I have severe problems with my back and my knees and 5 or 6 other things. He is on full disability and I am in the process of getting it. I can hardly function in any way, and we don't have the money to have my problems fixed so that I can take proper care of my husband. No friends or family nearby. I feel that my life is all downhill now, that the best has past and I will never get to do those things again, and in a nutshell, I feel like I need to get ready to die. Write my will, throw away or sell most of my "stuff", and just wait to die.
Pretty grim, yes. But what I am saying is that you are not the least bit alone, it may very well be something in our new lowered level of metabolism, or hormones or something that is making us feel this way. I feel just like your description, except that I can't work. The last job I had was sort of like yours - very intense, and I finally got too sick to work and they fired me.
A little more about you: Are you married? Kids? Pets? Hobbies? Health? Meds? Friends? Etc. etc..
We will help you through this transition. I know it's a transition, because the 50s are notorious for being the hardest years, after teenagehood that is, and the 60s are better.
The people here are really nice.
Please write back.
a5
Thank you, Aurelia
Thanks for responding so quickly. It means a lot. I agree that part of the depth-charge of sadness may in fact be hormonal, though what is interesting about my experience now is that I see the pattern of the girl I was, as well as the ambitious young woman who always swung between functional and sad and anxious. For many years I have swung between productive states and periods when I am crushed by sadness. I don't think I am bipolar. I think I am a true melancholic soul, born sad as a child, always suffering about others, worried about the world, and unable to bear cruelty. As an example, as a teenager, when I saw men lying in the gutter in Philadelphia, in those years before we used the term "homelessness," I would weep. I have always seen myself as a depressive/anxious kind of soul.
Perhaps there is something about mid-life that allows us to have the perspective on the pattern of depression as it played itself out over many years.
I am a writer, unmarried and currently single, though I have had several long domestic partnerships. I'm gay and a professional, no children-- though a series of very fine canine and feline companions have graced my life-- and I have strong connections with several of my siblings and with my mother. I have good friends.
A year ago I went on Lexapro, which has helped a bit. But I have been struggling with feelings of wanting to die that come and go. I could not hurt others by hurting myself, but sometimes the pain is almost unendurable. I have a demanding and rewarding job that demands that I keep a good face on things in public. So I find myself coming home alone and simply crashing.
My father struggled with undiagnosed, pretty strong depression and I see its shadow in my siblings. He medicated himself with alcohol and prescription drugs and all of us in our (half-Irish) family have had to cope with alcohol as a charged substance in our lives. Although I drank normally for years, I noticed that I more and more wanted to get drunk when I drank-- this began after a breakup of a 13 year relationship 9 years ago.
Your situation as your describe it seems packed with real-life challenges that one test anyone's mettle. Do you feel that you and your husband are in this together, as partners who can help each other get through the daily challenges of health and money? And would you describe your feelings of depression as "situational"-- or have you struggled with this for years, during the good times?
My best to you-------------------------
Perhaps there is something about mid-life that allows us to have the perspective on the pattern of depression as it played itself out over many years.
I am a writer, unmarried and currently single, though I have had several long domestic partnerships. I'm gay and a professional, no children-- though a series of very fine canine and feline companions have graced my life-- and I have strong connections with several of my siblings and with my mother. I have good friends.
A year ago I went on Lexapro, which has helped a bit. But I have been struggling with feelings of wanting to die that come and go. I could not hurt others by hurting myself, but sometimes the pain is almost unendurable. I have a demanding and rewarding job that demands that I keep a good face on things in public. So I find myself coming home alone and simply crashing.
My father struggled with undiagnosed, pretty strong depression and I see its shadow in my siblings. He medicated himself with alcohol and prescription drugs and all of us in our (half-Irish) family have had to cope with alcohol as a charged substance in our lives. Although I drank normally for years, I noticed that I more and more wanted to get drunk when I drank-- this began after a breakup of a 13 year relationship 9 years ago.
Your situation as your describe it seems packed with real-life challenges that one test anyone's mettle. Do you feel that you and your husband are in this together, as partners who can help each other get through the daily challenges of health and money? And would you describe your feelings of depression as "situational"-- or have you struggled with this for years, during the good times?
My best to you-------------------------
-
georgiapeach
- Posts: 1729
- Joined: Fri Mar 21, 2008 8:59 pm
- Contact:
((((((((((((((( simone )))))))))))))))))
thats a hug above just so you know! welcome here... i hope you continue to post more as time goes on!!!!! there is a chatroom attached to the site if you ever wanted to check it out. just wanted to let you know. again welcome and i look forward to more future posts!
thats a hug above just so you know! welcome here... i hope you continue to post more as time goes on!!!!! there is a chatroom attached to the site if you ever wanted to check it out. just wanted to let you know. again welcome and i look forward to more future posts!
Simone~
Before I strain by brain trying to rewrite this, let me warn you that you can lose a letter, in my case a long and well written and though-out and mentally challenging letter, because if you slip and hit 'control' or something, BIP! there it goes. So there is a really good start to a letter to you out there in the ether somewhere and I'm so mad my face is red. It's mostly me. I have a tremendous tremor in my hands and I can't move some of my fingers smoothly - they ratchet back and forth and it is a trial for me to hit the right key. All an artifact of my spinal problems, I think.
Anyway, what I was so eloquently saying was that your depression sounds so exactly like mine that I can't believe it. The way you used 'depth charge and crushing sadness' hit so close to home it is a relief to know that I can just hijack those words and cut and paste them right in my explanation of my life's drama.
There is good news though. We do indeed have a chemical imbalance that is causing this sadness. I was devastated by depression and sadness when I was about 7, constantly mourning the fact that my parents were going to get old. And as they got old I mourned for their deteriorating state of living, getting more and more broke, my mother going farther and farther into her neuroses and finally into Alzheimers. She died in her early 80s and my father died after a fall when he was 87. And then I stopped mourning. Now they were no longer suffering and I could be happy for them.
School was traumatic for me from day one at kindergarten. I didn't want to be away from them. I had, except for school, an idyllic childhood. So growing up and knowing it was going to end always set me to tears. I have a sister, 14 years older than me, she was always away at school, so I never got to know her. So I basically grew up an only child.
The depression never left. It got more complex and complicated, and I got better and better at hiding from it. But it was always there, building and building, until I just cried wracking sobs while I planned my suicide.
Suicide has amazingly been a life saver for me. (In the grammatical world, is there a name for such a statement - a total contradiction using mutually exclusive terms?) I knew I could kill myself any time I wanted, this is after my parents died, and so I didn't feel backed into a corner any longer and briefly cheered up. Now, my husband and I have it all planned out for when we can no longer stand our physical pain and/or can no longer afford to live. No inheritances from either of our families is in the future. Your question - about whether my husband was a supportive part of my life, all I can say, which is what he told someone once, is that we are joined at the soul.
So what I was so longwindedly getting at is that you and I and my friends Monty and Ken here in this forum, all have a need for antidepressants. Monty did the whole gamut and ended up with ECT. It worked for her. I am afraid of it because it wipes out your memory. So I am on the newest one, and my husband says it makes a huge difference - without it I would not have been able to handle the tragedy of his illness. I can't really feel anything, but then one of my docs said that antidepressants aren't supposed to make you feel good, they are just supposed to make you feel normal. And I do. I've handled this horror, and I am somehow getting through arthritis in my knees and spine, bursitis, foraminal stenosis, vertebrae T12 and L1 fusing without any of the disc left so I am in constant pain with pinched nerves, fibromyalgia, and chronic fatigue syndrome.
Cymbalta is the name of it. I think it is worth trying and I tell everybody on here about it. A large bit of my depression is existential, but not all of it because I get much more depressed about my existance than most people do. So it's nature and nurture. (I took a bunch of psych classes and they were always arguing the two against each other. And I was always arguing that it was BOTH, DAMNIT!!!) What you could expect to feel if you tried it, is like me - just an even keel; no waves, but not a dead calm either. My husband, who is a terrifically happy and cheerful person, couldn't get out of a recent depression and I forced him to try Cymbalta. It worked. He says it's like night and day. Thank heaven.
I have more to say, but my arm hurts. Go to your private message board. There is a microscopic prompt up at the top of the page that says you have a message - look there tonight.
To be continued . . .
Before I strain by brain trying to rewrite this, let me warn you that you can lose a letter, in my case a long and well written and though-out and mentally challenging letter, because if you slip and hit 'control' or something, BIP! there it goes. So there is a really good start to a letter to you out there in the ether somewhere and I'm so mad my face is red. It's mostly me. I have a tremendous tremor in my hands and I can't move some of my fingers smoothly - they ratchet back and forth and it is a trial for me to hit the right key. All an artifact of my spinal problems, I think.
Anyway, what I was so eloquently saying was that your depression sounds so exactly like mine that I can't believe it. The way you used 'depth charge and crushing sadness' hit so close to home it is a relief to know that I can just hijack those words and cut and paste them right in my explanation of my life's drama.
There is good news though. We do indeed have a chemical imbalance that is causing this sadness. I was devastated by depression and sadness when I was about 7, constantly mourning the fact that my parents were going to get old. And as they got old I mourned for their deteriorating state of living, getting more and more broke, my mother going farther and farther into her neuroses and finally into Alzheimers. She died in her early 80s and my father died after a fall when he was 87. And then I stopped mourning. Now they were no longer suffering and I could be happy for them.
School was traumatic for me from day one at kindergarten. I didn't want to be away from them. I had, except for school, an idyllic childhood. So growing up and knowing it was going to end always set me to tears. I have a sister, 14 years older than me, she was always away at school, so I never got to know her. So I basically grew up an only child.
The depression never left. It got more complex and complicated, and I got better and better at hiding from it. But it was always there, building and building, until I just cried wracking sobs while I planned my suicide.
Suicide has amazingly been a life saver for me. (In the grammatical world, is there a name for such a statement - a total contradiction using mutually exclusive terms?) I knew I could kill myself any time I wanted, this is after my parents died, and so I didn't feel backed into a corner any longer and briefly cheered up. Now, my husband and I have it all planned out for when we can no longer stand our physical pain and/or can no longer afford to live. No inheritances from either of our families is in the future. Your question - about whether my husband was a supportive part of my life, all I can say, which is what he told someone once, is that we are joined at the soul.
So what I was so longwindedly getting at is that you and I and my friends Monty and Ken here in this forum, all have a need for antidepressants. Monty did the whole gamut and ended up with ECT. It worked for her. I am afraid of it because it wipes out your memory. So I am on the newest one, and my husband says it makes a huge difference - without it I would not have been able to handle the tragedy of his illness. I can't really feel anything, but then one of my docs said that antidepressants aren't supposed to make you feel good, they are just supposed to make you feel normal. And I do. I've handled this horror, and I am somehow getting through arthritis in my knees and spine, bursitis, foraminal stenosis, vertebrae T12 and L1 fusing without any of the disc left so I am in constant pain with pinched nerves, fibromyalgia, and chronic fatigue syndrome.
Cymbalta is the name of it. I think it is worth trying and I tell everybody on here about it. A large bit of my depression is existential, but not all of it because I get much more depressed about my existance than most people do. So it's nature and nurture. (I took a bunch of psych classes and they were always arguing the two against each other. And I was always arguing that it was BOTH, DAMNIT!!!) What you could expect to feel if you tried it, is like me - just an even keel; no waves, but not a dead calm either. My husband, who is a terrifically happy and cheerful person, couldn't get out of a recent depression and I forced him to try Cymbalta. It worked. He says it's like night and day. Thank heaven.
I have more to say, but my arm hurts. Go to your private message board. There is a microscopic prompt up at the top of the page that says you have a message - look there tonight.
To be continued . . .
Return to “New Member Introductions”
Who is online
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 76 guests