Uphill Battle

From birth till around age eight I was a somewhat happy kid. As happy as I could be. Although my mom wasn't the kindest, or most maternal, I had friends and neighbors, and we lived somewhat close to my grandparents, so I had much more good in my life than bad. When my mom married my step-dad, we moved from Columbus, Ohio to a much smaller town in Ohio. Like much smaller. Like a ten with ten thousand people small. My free spirited, no bra wearing, pot smoking mom was a bit much for the PTA if you know what I mean. It was that year that I started getting bullied. It started from the time I got on the bus through the whole day, through the bus ride home. I begged to switch schools, begged at least for my mom to drive me to and from school, and she just wouldn't do it. It was around that time that I really became a loner, and also an introvert. I was only safe when I was alone.
My depression came to a head sometime around fourteen or so. I was in the middle stages of my battle with anorexia, and I just didn't want to live anymore. I made peace with my decision, and I swallowed a ton of pills. I remember padding around the house while everyone was sleeping, and looking in their rooms and saying goodbye. I ended up puking my guts out, and being sick with "the flu" for a couple of days, and to this day no one knows about that first attempt.
Depression has never left me. I just have learned to deal with it through the years. I've been to many psychiatrists, and I've been on many medications. I feel like anti depressants, or at least the ones I was prescribed were more like speed. They always gave me a zip of energy, but yet all the sad dark feelings were still there. I still thought I was an ugly piece of shit, I was just an energetic ugly piece of shit.
The last time I was on any type of medication was more than ten years ago. I had a really bad experience, one where I actually was hallucinating, and when I told the psychiatrist about it, he responded by saying we would just lower the dosage, and then put me on a different medication to balance out whatever was in the first one. I walked out of there that day and have never looked back. I've barely taken an aspirin since then.
I then spent way too many years drinking away my blues. I remember days where it just hurt too much to be sober. Days and days and days where it felt that way. I now know that alcohol is a depressant, actually I knew it then, but when alcohol takes the pain away, it's hard to give it up. The sick thinking is to just drink more, to keep up the facade.
Since giving up the drinking, I feel like I've been able to manage my depression, keep it under control. Even when I was living in PA, which is when I felt the loneliest I ever have, I still managed to keep my depression under control.
Which is why I am so surprised that now, when I am probably at my healthiest, and doing the most I ever have to deal with my issues, I feel like I'm losing the battle with depression. For the last few days I've felt the body aches, the tiredness, taking things personally that I really shouldn't, and just seeing everything in the color bleak. Both yesterday and the day before I had to fight very strong urges to drink and smoke cigarettes. I'm looking for that relief. I don't know what to do with these feelings, and I know sitting in them and deal with them is what I need to do. Whether you are on medication, or whatever your way of smothering those feelings, they don't go away, they only stay and fester. And time doesn't always heal. Sometimes time makes things worse. I'm really writing this to myself, to remind myself that I am on the right path. Meditation and walking, and writing down my feelings, all of these things are far more effective than drinking and smoking away my problems. I know this, I've tried just about every other way to cope, and they don't work. I feel frustrated that depression has hit me so hard, when I have been working harder than ever. But I'm writing this to remind myself that I don't want to go back, I don't want to medicate, I want to heal. I can do this.