She was a really great person from the moment we met, and I was just really upset that I thought she wasn’t who she had seemed to be. She needed help, and I’m glad between the group of us that we were able to get her what she needed, and she was determined to do things the right way and not get so far off the path she wanted to be on again. It was a real group effort, as I was important as the person to hold her accountable and to see the good in her she couldn’t at the time, her family for caring about her health and safety and having the means to get it for her, the team of doctors she got, and her herself for finding a way to believe in herself while she was trying to hold together the broken bits of her life. She was very scared of everything, including herself for a long time, so it was not easy.

I feel a bit bad sharing this stuff, since I’m sure she isn’t thrilled to have others know it, but I think it’s important to see success stories, and I share details about my own struggles for decades with depression for the same reason. This stuff shouldn’t be stigmatized because that does no good for anyone. My inability to admit to what people treat as a weakness helped me screw up my friends’ lives for decades and I lost many important relationships and opportunities in life because of how I felt inside all the time and because people made me feel the need to try to fix it all on my own and not got all zombied up by medicine. It was so quick and simple to get my life fixed for essentially almost no time or money, I kick myself every day for not doing it sooner. Even when I had no insurance, a month of my medicine cost no more than $20, and it started working within the first week and my life did a 180. I thought it would be so long a process, involving so many doctors and years of therapy and feeling dead inside, but I was at my yearly physical and said I’ve been depressed for over 20 years and what can I do about it. Doc sent me out with a scrip and that was the end of feeling a crushing weight every day.

I know it isn’t that simple for everyone, but for me it was, but I didn’t know until I just accepted it wasn’t something I could fix myself and was tired of trashing my whole life every few years and needed to break the cycle. I’m a lot more successful now mentally, and my girlfriend now works in a hospital helping others. She’s so much smarter and talented than I ever would have thought when we met. If you feel you need help, go get it by whatever means you can. It isn’t shameful, it doesn’t make you weak. We all need help to varying degrees and people are social animals and we need each other by design. Every day I kick myself for not learning this sooner and I ache for all the people I loved that I hurt by being stubborn that I’ll never see again, but now I try to use that to empathize with others. I can’t take back anything I’ve done out of sadness or anger, but I can learn from it and share my experiences to hopefully try to help someone else out. I don’t wish those feelings on anyone; it can be such crushing weight.