[Wants2Fly]

Thank you, everyone, for sharing what depression feels like to you. It all sounds so familiar.

Does anyone else have trouble recognizing when depression is going to hit? I'm falling apart. I see the long slow slide, and at the same time the suddenness of bottoming has taken me by surprise.

As I look back, I can see I've been crying off and on for a few weeks. Today, I started being short-tempered with students -- who probably deserved it -- and that made me feel more guilty. I have been withdrawing, and last Sunday for the first time in years my mother did not call, but I've been making her cry the past few weeks, too. She's 86 and does not deserve her loser of a daughter.

This past week is the first time in my life I can ever remember using such totally negative language toward myself -- loser, jerk -- and truly feel like hate myself. Hate everything about myself. Not for any particular good reason, just because I take up space on the earth.

I have not had a f/t job since 2008. I am now working four p/t contacts, and for what? I'm not sure how much longer I can even pay the mortgage on my apt, which has changed to a bankrupt near-slum in the housing crisis. And that's a huge part of it for me -- being a rank failure who cannot even take care of herself.

I look back, and I see the long slow slide and yet today, I just feel as if it all somehow hit, like going down under the wheels of a truck. Sorry, sorry for venting.

[gimmeice]

(((((((((((((( wants2fly )))))))))))))))))

It's ok to vent.
I know what you mean about how depression is a slow slide but seems to be like the bottom dropping out all at once, I am sorry you are feeling overwhelmed.

[Wants2Fly]

Thank you, Gimmeice, for affirming that depression can seem to be so contradictory -- a slow side yet something that hits all at once.

[Fuzzybear]

(((((((((((((((( Wants2Fly )))))))))))))))))

[Berries]

(((((((((((Wants2Fly)))))))))))

I'm sorry you have to feel depression and all that goes with it.
Try not to listen to the self-abuse. It is just the depression lying to you.

Please keep venting here. We all want to listen. We care.

[Rohag]

Hello, Wants2Fly!

Originally Posted by Wants2Fly

Thank you, Gimmeice, for affirming that depression can seem to be so contradictory -- a slow side yet something that hits all at once.

I have a "macro-experience" of this way of falling into depression. In hindsight and looking over the course of years, I see myself gradually sliding into depression with two sudden drop-offs, the first relatively gentler than the second - followed by a collapse sometime later.

I think, however, what you are talking about is the repeated onset of multiple depressive episodes over the course of a single year/period, yes?

(Oh, venting... You're definitely welcome to vent here. Go ahead and vent like it's 1999, or whatever they say...)

EDIT: Here I am telling someone who's been a member here since 2004 and over 3K posts that's it's OK to vent... *shakes head at self*

[theotterone]

By definition, depression swings one way then another.

In the "heat" of the moment, or in the midst of what is going on that may trigger it, it seems sudden because we don't know how to deal with it.

Once we have some time and space away from the "event", we can see it much more clearer, and can spot the signs of it coming. Hind-sight is 20/20!

Hang in there. We get it and support you!

[turquoisesea]

sometimes its hard to see the little slips, th little falls, that all amount to one BIG distance

[Wants2Fly]

Thank you, all, for commenting. I tend not to have multiple depressive episodes in one year. I am triggered by events, especially feeling financially and professionally helpless. I had been holding up relatively well for a few years, but I am tired of the struggle.