Gun’s Quote-of-the-Week:
“Most people would rather be certain they’re miserable than
risk being happy.”
-Robert Anthony
I haven’t written for a long time and this time it’s because
I have written an entire Gun’s Quote, then deleted it. I’ve done this for a
month. I didn’t like how they read at all.
My purpose in writing this quote has been, and continues to
be, to help others who are in the same boat reach out and ask for help. It was
never to throw a pity party, seek consolation or to receive any self-serving
comments of affirmation. I just wanted people to know they were not alone and
that it doesn’t have to be this way. I’m just not sure I can write that way
considering the story I am about to tell. So here it goes; an imperfect telling
of an imperfect story.
About two years ago, I was diagnosed with clinical
depression and generalized anxiety disorder. Blood work was done and confirmed suspicions
that I and my physicians shared; my hormone levels were completely shot. (As a
point of reference, I had testosterone levels equivalent to that of an
80-year-old man.) Something inside my head was going wrong and before I knew
it, I had specialists drawing blood, giving me specialized cognitive exams, taking
computer tests and answering weird questions about how I feel when I’m in a
dark room. It was a little unnerving.
After we cleared the “major” diagnoses out of the way, (no
cancer, no early-onset dementia, no endocrine system failure, no
hypothyroidism) it was time to look at how my brain was processing a special
chemical called serotonin. Therein lied the culprit.
It was in January that I started my regimen of medication to
balance out my serotonin levels.
I can tell you now that I genuinely feel better now than I
have in probably a decade.
I’m not sure if anybody can relate: Getting out of bed in
the morning and having only two or three goals for the day and yet going to
sleep that night not having accomplished any of them. Wandering about your day
literally thinking that every person you met was inconvenienced by your
presence. Thinking that you were always the low man on the totem pole, the
weakest link, the whipping boy. None of these things were true, but what was
true is that I would never stand up for myself because I genuinely thought it
was true.
I’m not sure if anybody reading this knows what it means
when I say that you know you are loved but don’t feel loved. Know you’ve had a
full-night’s sleep but feel like you’ve been up all night. Know you know what
you are doing but doubt everything you say, do, touch and write. This has been
my life for years and years and years.
Again, I’m writing this Gun’s Quote not asking for a pity
party or even an “It’s OK.” I don’t want “I’m sorry” or even “I love you”
posted on my wall simply for having penned this together. My goal here is to
tell the people that need to hear it the following:
It doesn’t have to be this way.
I let pride get in the way. You will note that I said the
diagnosis was made about 2 years ago and that I started treatment in January.
Why the lapse? Because of stigma.
I didn’t want to be the guy that was on antidepressants. It’s
not very manly. Even if I chose not to share that fact with other people, the
idea that I would be dependent on a drug for the rest of my life was so
repulsive, so impossible that I tried everything else in the world to avoid it.
I tried working out harder. I tried sleeping more. I tried reading a book about
personal organization and productivity to reduce stress. I enlisted the help of
a personal mentor at work. Nothing worked.
At some point in time you have to ask yourself the honest
question: “What are you willing to suffer?” Was I willing to suffer these
symptoms any longer? Was I willing to be on medication? Was I willing to be
attached to a stigma?
There was no one singular event that caused the answers to
those questions to finally change. I made the decision that 2014 was simply
going to be the year when this would finally stop. I simply decided that the
answer to the first question was, “No.”
Now being diagnosed and officially being treated for one, I
am only too aware of the social stigmas and queasiness associated with mental
illness. There is the fear that the mentally ill will walk in to a movie
theater and shoot a bunch of people. Perhaps hijack an airplane. Maybe end up
in an asylum somewhere with padded cells. That’s crap and such thinking needs
to stop right now.
If you or someone you know is struggling with this in any
way, then please, please please… Call your doctor. I know that’s a hard thing
to do and it’s even harder to acknowledge that you may need help. You are not
weak, you are not a freak, and you’re not alone. I didn’t put my self out there
on the internet for you to read this and then think to yourself, “Oh, he can’t
be talking about me…” and then do nothing about it. I can tell you with a
tremendous amount of assurance that it is not worth it to suffer so silently
for so long.
So, that’s it. If you think that mental illness is reserved
for those in padded cells, guess what, your horizons have been expanded. If you
need help, I hope you now have a reason to believe that you should. That’s why
I wrote this, (like four times…) and why I’m putting it out there.
Don’t wait as long as I did. It’s not worth it.
…and that’s why it’s a Gun’s Quote!
