I’m in a very sorrowful place, crying almost daily and doing everything I can to process the emotions that are long overdue.

I know intuitively that it is time to feel the feelings I have been pushing down for as long as I can remember.

How did I get here?

I’m sure if I dug deep enough I could trace everything back to my childhood, but it isn’t the time to do that. For now, I’ll start with adulthood and my history with anti-depressants.

I was married at 21. My husband was only 6 months older than me, and we were both attending college and working as food servers during the early years of our marriage. At some point I caught a flu that lasted over a month and drained me of my energy for several more. I went to the university health clinic and discovered I was infected with mononucleosis. Looking back I don’t know how I managed to get my studies done but somehow I did.

The months following the acute illness were a struggle. My appetite was non-existent and I had no energy. When the doctor suggested Prozac, I decided to give them a try. I’ve always struggled with side-effects to medications, and this marked the beginning of attempting anti-depressant after anti-depressant and contemplating how much the benefits were worth the costs. Are the nausea and headaches worth having the crippling sadness taken away? With Prozac, the side effects were horrible. I still remember experiencing my first “brain-zap” while standing in the Chili’s that I worked at in Reno. I didn’t stay on that drug much longer.

Within a few years I would have my first child and experience bouts of post-partum depression. Sometime after the rush of childbirth wore off the exhaustion and depression began. I was simultaneously happy and fulfilled while also exhausted and miserable. I turned into a giant clam, and I told no one that I was suffering. I’d have to repeat this struggle 2 more times before I would finally tell my doctor as I approached delivery that I was most likely going to get post-partum depression.

It was between my third and fourth child that a doctor would find an anti-depressant that I found tolerable. The doctor was an endocrinologist I went to be checked for thyroid problems. Within days of being put on thyroid medication, the depression I felt lifted. For a few years, that’s all I needed, but then my job in tech started becoming stressful in ways that no woman should ever experience. My appetite disappeared, I lost weight, and I wasn’t sleeping. When I went in for a regular checkup with that doctor, he suggested I try an atypical anti-depressant called Mirtazapine. He suggested it because two of the side effects could work in my favor: weight gain and sleepiness.

Initially that drug was a miracle that I was grateful for. It wasn’t until over a decade later I began to understand what a nightmare it really was.

Sometimes I wonder what person I would be and where my career would’ve ended up be if I had not taken that drug. I slept well and I looked healthy, but I was emotionally blunted and only felt a few of the major emotions: mainly anxiety. Depression that had taken away my appetite and my will to live morphed into a very functional, career-driven anxiety while on Mirtazapine. I regret the disconnected mother I was during those years. I regret how I let the stress of taking care of my family financially overwhelm me to the point where that drug seemed like a great way out.

Fast forward to the end of 2019. Mirtazapine had stopped working, and I wasn’t sleeping well anymore. My job at that time was quite stressful, but not in the ways that my first job in tech was. I quit taking Mirtazapine and did a sleep study shortly thereafter. What I learned was interesting. When I laid in bed for hours thinking that I was not asleep, I was in a light stage of sleep. I also learned that for whatever reason, I really wasn’t getting much REM sleep. Looks like I probably wasn’t processing emotions well either: https://neurosciencenews.com/sleep-emotion-processing-20578/

It took me years to get off of Mirtazapine. I had been gradually tapering down for close to 3 years prior, thinking that many of my other health problems might be tied to that drug. At the end of 2019, I was to the point where I could go off of it and not experience a psychotic break because of it. Luckily I had a doctor who would work with me and my own plan for how to taper down. Most doctors would taper you off much faster than I found feasible, so eventually, I would come up with my own plan.

I ended up quitting the stressful job in April of 2020, after the pandemic had started. The stress of the societal upheavals combined with my marriage ending was intense, but looking back, I still was not emotionally present in the way that I am now. I believe it took four years for the emotional blunting effects of that drug to wear off.

At the end of 2023, my heart was broken by a rather sudden and cold withdraw by a person whom I thought would never do such a thing to me. I was going through some other major stressors when he told me it was over. I was worried about possibly losing my job in consulting and dealing with a possible ulcer and gastritis infection. I was in pain and losing weight, and now the person I felt closest to in the world was gone.

I knew instinctively that the sadness that surfaced after the breakup could not entirely be pinned on the breakup. I knew that there were other emotions tucked away that I had neglected tending to: the guilt and sadness for the end of my marriage, the death of the person I used to think that I was, the guilt for not being a better mother and for being career-obsessed when my children were young. The guilt of being a reactive coworker who’d get triggered at the slightest thing, and the employee who gave too much to her job while neglecting her marriage and her children. I regret all the present moments that I wasted by being trapped somewhere else, worried about the future or obsessing about the past.

I find myself somewhere in The Dark Night of The Soul. Perhaps I’m still experiencing the existential depression. I feel that my ego is dying and none of the things that used to drive me matter much anymore. What does matter to me? In many ways, I have lived my life up to this point for others, deriving no real happiness from it and running on the fumes of anxiety, trying to be what everyone else expected me to me. I am done with that style of living, if it can be called that. I think what I’ve been doing can more accurately be called “coping”.

A few things are emerging, and I don’t find it coincidental that they are all creative. Writing, music, dance, and painting all hold a sacred space for me. I love to cook and travel and spend time in nature. I feel called to finish a book I’ve been working on for years. I’m questioning whether or not I will always work in tech. Perhaps after my children are grown I will reevaluate and see if I want to teach like I originally planned to when I was in college.

I don’t know what the future holds. I’m scared these dark emotions will continue to linger and no rays of sunshine will ever come through again. I’m scared that I’ll break from the pressure of having to support my family when I really just want to rest. I’m finding ways to take care of myself that I have never bothered with before, like meditation and learning how to be still and in solitude. I have hope that the darkness will pass, because it has always passed before. Is this time different? Yes, very much so, but I know that it is different in ways that will significantly change me the rest of my life. I’m in the in-between stage between being in a cocoon and being a butterfly. If you look too closely, you would see a gooey disorganized mess, but if you wait long enough, you should see the butterfly.