Draft of an open letter (long)

I'm posting this here as I build up the courage to post this elsewhere. This is a stream of consciousness wall of text.

I have depression. I've had it for as long as I can remember, but didn't clue into it until my early 20s. Even then, I wasn't sure if I was just making mountains out of mole hills. Looking online for information just left me confused. There are all these sites that explain what "depression" is. But as I read through the symptoms, I just kept thinking to myself "Doesn't this happen to everyone? What''s the difference between being depressed and having depression?". Eventually I went to a doctor. He spit out the list of symptoms I had found online and asked if I had any of them. "Are you sad? Are you tired? Do you have negative thoughts?" Well, duh. But there must be more than that. "Are you having thoughts of suicide?" "I don't think about killing myself, but I do think about what would happen if I died. I don't know if that's normal or not..." I was told I did indeed have mild depression, was given a prescription and a recommendation to see a therapist. It felt good being diagnosed, but I didn't really get a good answer as to what made this "depression" and not "being depressed". I wasn't given any info about what to expect from the medication either. I started going to therapy. I had 2 sessions. I didn't know what to do there, and it seems like my therapist took that as me not wanting/needing to be there because I was unable to schedule a third session. Meanwhile, I told some of my family that I had started taking anti-depressants. They were more worried about me taking medication than anything, and just wanted me to stop taking it and work on "not letting things get to me". They were honestly trying to help, but they went about it in the wrong way. The stress from all the questions, lack of answers, and lack of support from family led me to stop taking my medication before long. So I spent the next several years just putting up with it. And I managed fine, until beginning of 2016.

I took a contract for 3 months that paid well, but was such a cluster fuck in so many ways that by the time it was over I was mentally drained. I couldn't self motivate myself to work anymore. I had to have someone drag me by the nose. 2016 was poised to be the most successful year of my career, but I was so mentally fucked that I couldn't take advantage of the opportunities I spent years moving towards. And every time I wasn't able to step up to the plate, I'd resent myself more and more. Rather than getting over it over time, my mind resisted harder and harder until I basically couldn't work at all. My self hatred went from a passive thought in the back of my mind to a persistent screaming. I started to feel that, while I didn't want to die, that I should kill myself. And that scared the fuck out of me. I was no longer in control. So as of October last year, i went to a new doctor and told him I was worried that if things kept going as they were, I may one day kill myself. He set up an appointment with a psychologist to give me a new, proper diagnosis, and I was to wait for a call as to when it would be. A month passed and nothing. So I went back to the doctors office, and they said it's not here yet, keep waiting. Another 2 weeks pass, and I go back again to ask. Turns out it DID arrive, and no one knows why I didn't get it, and my appointment date had passed. So I had to start over again. After going to the doctors office, saying I was worried I may kill myself, it then took 4 months to see a psychologist. I'm freaking out the whole time. But I finally see him, and holy shit he explains what "depression" is, and what mental disorders are in general. Simplistically, It's a mental disorder if it has a negative impact on your life for a prolonged period of time. It's subjective. If you're depressed for a few months but you're able to deal with it then it's likely not "depression". If it's, for example, preventing you from working, or getting in the way of your ability to live a healthy life, then probably go to the doctor. That's my basic summary, don't use that to diagnose yourself, but it helped put things into perspective for me.

Anyway. Was told again, yes I have moderate Major Depressive Disorder. I should start taking medication and if possible seek therapy, as well as get some blood work done to make sure it's not some other issue causing the depression. Cool. Now I need to wait for the recommendation to get back to my doctors office where we'd start figuring out what medications will work for me. More waiting, again they didn't call when the recommendation and blood work came in, but I was bugging them so I didn't wait 4 months this time. Blood work comes back fine. I'm told it takes a month to see if the medication works, and we may need to try several before finding something that works for me. I try and be optimistic. The first medication I get was an SSRI(don't remember which), and i felt it's effects the first night I took it. I couldn't sit still, I was very anxious. But after a few days, I felt more motivated than I had in as long as I could remember. I was super excited. Until it stopped. Back to not being able to do anything, and thinking I should kill myself(still not actually wanting to though). So after the month ended, went back to the doctors, got prescription #2, bupropion, a Heterocyclic antidepressant. Couldn't tell if it worked or not because it made me so damn tired. But I was getting more anxiety than before, So they thought maybe I was actually bipolar, and gave me quetiapine to talk along with the bupropion, and sent me off for another 10 days. It helped the anxiety, but nothing much otherwise. So they switch me again off both, and onto good old Zoloft. Again, I'm not sure if it's working, but I am sure that it's making me sleep all fucking day. So I've been experimenting with medications for 4 months so far with nothing working. Doctor suggests trying duloxetine, and if that doesn't work says we'll take some saliva samples to run tests to see if we can pinpoint what the problem is.

And would you look at that, I actually notice a difference. I've stopped chanting in my head that I should kill myself. Mostly. Went from thinking that every few hours to a week or two between! Buuut I'm still at 0 motivation, and this is still having a negative impact on my sleep(though I've found the right time to take it to reduce the sleep issues). So I go back to the doctor and tell him I can tell it's doing something, but I'm not exactly ok yet. But he seems to think this is good and told me to keep taking it for 2 months to see what happens.

So that's where I am now. it's been... 3 weeks of the 2 month period. And I don't notice any further change. And I'm back to having questions. SHOULD I be expecting more change? Or is this where I'm gonna be for the rest of my life? Who the fuck knows. All I know is that this was just the context for what I'm about to say.

I've told almost no one about any of this. My family is unaware of this second attempt at medication, and I've mentioned that I've taken antidepressants to a couple people who I feel should seek out help, but no one really knows about the story I wrote above. No one knows I've thought about killing myself, or that I've been having a hard time at all. And I'm sure that fact is contributing to my depression. But it's not that there's no one who WOULD listen, I just don't feel like I can tell them. I actively lie about it. My personality drives me to want to help everyone. But in my mind, if I let anyone see my weakness, then not only will they not let me help them anymore, but they'll pity me. But being everyone's sounding board, without letting anyone be mine, it just too much. It's fucked up my ability to enter into a relationship with anyone, because either I don't feel like I can take on another persons problems, or I don't want to bring another person into my problems. Everyone, myself included, is just a big sack of problems that just gets passed around. I've recently learned that my ego is bigger than I thought it was, and that just because I'm trying to help people doesn't mean I'm not judgmental. I assume opening myself up to people will only cause me problems. They can't possibly help me. They don't really want to. They'll judge me without knowing, like I judge them. They don't understand, and they can't. What I'm going through isn't as bad as so many other people, so I should just calm the fuck down. Logically I know this is false, but emotionally I'm still scared. One way or the other, telling people will change things, and even that feels exhausting to me right now. Putting in actual effort that I can't pin on someone else. What if I fail? Or what if success isn't what I hope?

There's so much more to say. I'm starting to give myself a headache thinking about all this at once. Need to do one thing at a time. Today, it's posting this as a trial. Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to tell the people who care about me that I need help. I hope so.