I think the issue I face the most is my depression and the constant battle with my medication. I remember when I was just beginning to face my difficulties with depression and anxiety and I could feel every tingle in my body and urge to run. I can also remember some days when I did feel genuinely happy. But as my condition got worse, the more the depression engulfed me to the point I could no longer live without at least giving medication a try.
As I have mentioned in the past, medication for me was a miracle and almost seven years later, I still have a daily dosage. It helped to level me out to a point whereby I could begin to function again in daily life, but it also made me feel numb in way that depression couldn’t. I feel used to my mood and understanding myself by now, but as a result of my medication for my depression I never seem to reach the extremes of any emotion. I guess that’s a consequence I have to face, otherwise I’m sure I would be feeling the very depths of depression and that’s not a risk I can take.
I’m not sure that I’ve needed my medication for a very long time, but I haven’t found a good place where I am able to come off of it. There’s always work in the way and the concern that I would spiral, but I like to think that I understand what triggers me and what doesn’t these days. I do dream of a day when I can feel the depths of love, happiness and excitement, not at the expense of my mental illness and I am pretty sure I will be able to do that soon, which is an exciting prospect. It would almost be like taking off a mask.
There are still a few occasions where I will feel numb in times of great stress and life events and that’s not something that medication could ever solve. I cannot expect for that to be something that my medication could handle when my external environment also changes. There are also times when certain triggers of mine with still wreck havoc regardless of anything I’m taking and that usually won’t be numbness, but rather feeling the whole world and loss of coping.
Numbness is something that anyone can deal with, whether that’s through grief of shock. It’s perhaps even more so if you have depression as a condition as it can be your body’s way of protecting itself from further harm. What people forget is that the brain is just as important as the rest of the body and needs armour sometimes too. When you become numb, it’s your body’s way of stopping any more stress from takings it’s toll. Perhaps even repeated traumatic situations will lead you to become numb to a particular area, causing you difficulty to connect with others. But as I’ve also discussed, numbness can also be in every emotion you feel and it’s certaintly something I feel on a regular basis. It’s almost as if I can only reach eighty percent of an emotion, as long as what I’m facing on the outside isn’t severely triggering. But sometimes you have to understand that it’s a balance and a compromise and a journey that does get easier over time.
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