Dark Days

During my early life, I was not aware of a mental illness. Prior to college, I felt inadequate, experienced low self-esteem and was indecisive and insecure. I did not attribute these feelings to an illness. Starting in my early-twenties, more discrete symptoms of mental illness appeared: fear (afraid of my own shadow, pure terror), stay in a bad place because it’s familiar), confusion, isolation even in a crowd, unable to speak, hopelessness without end. In my thirties, I remember being in my backyard covered in a deep, dark haze. I felt like I had been carried off in a spaceship to some unknown, scary place. Episodes like that scared me out of my mind. Even so, I still did not associate these instances with a mental illness. I got married in my mid-thirties. I could not be present for my wife. I could not be present for myself. I just wanted it to end….and I didn’t car how. But it wouldn’t end. It couldn’t end. I had no idea how to end it. I could imagine what hell was like. That’s what depression felt like for me. Hell on earth. Unimaginable torment. Not until my mid-forties did I get my initial diagnosis of depression. In my early-fifties, PTSD/Developmental trauma became my “true” diagnosis.