My relationship with shame

We've all heard that depression isn't about "just feeling sad" or "just tired". Then what is it really about? I've decided the best way for me to raise awareness has to be opening up on how these episodes affect me and my everyday life in these posts called: My depression today.

I was first told I had depression in high school.
No surprise, I was a sixteen-year-old kid who went at least once a week in PJs because I couldn't deal with choosing an outfit. Basically, I survived Monday through Thursday barely, and on Friday I would make an effort to go out to a party and self-medicate with alcohol and sex. Fun times... Not.
My mom and I struggled as I gathered myself to go to therapy. It wasn't easy. Peer pressure assured me there was nothing wrong. My heart knew otherwise and my mom as well. My drinking habits escalated. Until one day, begging and crying, my mom asked me to go to see a therapist.

I did. We talked. We were all relieved.
For a while, it seemed like the answer.

None of us accepted depression as a diagnosis. Somehow it was shameful.
For me, it was a suggestion some guidance counselor gave me in school, for my mom it sounded like a death sentence and for my psychologist, it was a thing I could "get over" in time. Peer pressure assured me there was nothing wrong. I was just some kid working out her daddy issues.

Some things were fixed with therapy, some weren't. My illness wasn't. So even if I would crawl, row and push and pull and try and move and do whatever anyone would advise me, nothing worked. My mind would wander to depression-land where no-one is ever happy, nothing is ever enough and everything is broken.
Gradually my relationship with my mom broke to the point where she couldn't deal with it anymore and trying to set boundaries she kicked me out. To my friends, she was exaggerating, there was nothing wrong with me, or so they said that to my face while most of them started to disappear.

After some healing time, we talked, I moved back in. Only to get hit by one of the biggest waves of depression I've ever had. I had lost so much in just a couple of years without understanding anything; opportunities, relationships, time, life. And not a single word made sense. Drinking to the state of blacking out was a must at least once a week. No one was able to control me. I rebelled completely against anything because nothing made any sense. I dwelled with the idea of depression, maybe, this isn't normal. Still, many people told me to "get over it", "move on", "just stop thinking". But I couldn't help the feeling that I was on the slow slope to death and had nothing to look forward to.

I was going down on such a spiral of alcohol abuse and promiscuity that my mom decided to send me to rehab.
I didn't actually care about the things my friends were scared about, I just thought about the shame of saying "I went to rehab". How would I tell my perfect husband one day that I was in rehab? But peer pressure assured me, rehab was something cool. Something to brag about. Even though, almost all my friends were mere acquaintances by then.

I was straight away diagnosed and prescribed with antidepressants, anti-anxiety, and sleeping pills. I was overwhelmed. Some doctor who I don't know is saying my brain doesn't work and I need crazy-people-pills... What?
And then I walk into the nut house and see everyone acting crazy? No. Not me. Not there. Not ever. No.

Eventually, I got over my judgemental bitchiness and decided to recognize myself as part of a group of humans for once, but, I still decided to go without medication. Just treat it myself. Because I'm not weak. I'm in control of my body and I can regulate my thoughts. I can do this. Just like the flu. I wouldn't admit being unable to function without medication.

(Hint: I was still a pretty judgemental bitch)

After a year, it hit me again. Differently. I didn't feel like sex and alcohol. I just stayed in bed, didn't move for weeks. Depression came like the horrible overpowering hoe she is and pull me from my pink cloud to humility: you can't. Ask for help.

Much like a crawl, I did. Went back to rehab and decided to take medication.
Boy, it was hard as fuck. Me, a 22-year-old cutie, smart, charismatic, taking more pills than my grandmother.

Suddenly, your mind is not your mind and your body is not your body. You have to get to know yourself all over again because "who dis". Side effects that I never even considered were happening and I didn't know what to do. I had to hide them most of the time. Confusion, the brain fog, shaking limbs. Lost memory. Mild hallucinations... While I pretended I was cool. Everything was ok.

Also, my environment changed dramatically.
People freak out to mental illness and medication because they don't know it. They only know the falsely portrayed images on series like "13 reasons why" that couldn't be further from the truth.
People started to shame me for the pills. As if I wasn't myself anymore. They were now an issue. They were now a reason to ask: Did you take your meds today? Do you have your meds? And thank God nobody ever controlled them because having someone counting and controlling them would've made me feel even worse. I started to hear comments like I wasn't dealing with the psychosomatic truth of my depression and I was just hiding the symptoms with medication. Or that big pharma would have me hooked. Or that I was changing one addiction for another. Like I was selling my brain to be a slave. Like I would change my personality because I didn't like it. Like it was something frivolous.

I thought medication alone would be the answer. And I suffered dearly the consequences of that mistake. Somehow I believed that they were an easy way out and that I could actually be like everyone else if I just took them.

Wrong again. And the spiral went way down again to the point of almost losing my life. I started resenting everyone around me for not having my "condition", I was upset and angry because I had to work twice as hard to do half as much. I was sad that my effort wasn't recognized and that I constantly felt exhausted. I was so broken by how hard consequences fell on me and weighed on my life while my friends just got away with things.

I became bitter and half unconsciously destroyed my life.
I kept feeling more and more ashamed of myself. My behavior, my body, my face, my situation in school, relationships.

When the suicide thoughts started to burst every couple of minutes, more shame would come over me. Vicious cycle. Am I weak enough to kill myself? Shame. Am I strong enough to actually do it? Shame. And I would fantasize, probably just overdose on medication. I wouldn't like to risk it. Jumping off a ledge and not dying? Or cut myself while I was broke in a foreign country, and unable to pay for any kind of healthcare? No thanks.

Somehow, after turning 17 my life became a walk of shame. Walking down the street in yesterday's clothes, with ruined makeup and feeling like someone broke his way into me the day before. With unexplained pain and bruises all over my body. An overall mess that could not look up.