My Growth Through Depression and Anxiety

I was roughly 8 years old when I had my first major depressive breakdown.
For a long time I chose not to share my story with others, because the few times I had, I could see the confusion on the faces of the people that heard it. Depression? At 8? What does a child have to be depressed about at 8? It was the same question that I saw on my parents’ faces when I told them that I didn’t feel like doing anything because I didn’t really know who I was anymore.

That day I woke up and began to get ready for another dreadful day of school where I had no friends, I hated the teacher and I often got bullied by my schoolmates. I was already aware of what anxiety felt like because every morning, as my mom woke me up, the panic would run through my veins. I knew what I would have to face in the next few minutes, and I knew that I would have to do it all alone. It terrified me.

But that day was different. The feeling that possessed me was not the same anxiety that I had been having for years. No, it was darker somehow. It was an immeasurable sadness that depleted any positive feeling or outlook on the world; a black hole that attracted and swallowed any reason for being happy, or for being alive at all. I didn’t feel like dying but didn’t feel like living either. I was breathing because my heart was pumping blood through my veins, not because I wanted to.

Explaining such dread to my parents became quite the challenge, impossible actually. In the beginning, they thought that I was just making things up to avoid going to school. Then they realized that something was seriously wrong, and it scared them more because they didn’t know what to do about it. Depression was not a word that was used often in the ’80s, and it wasn’t one that was paired with children at all. Back then, psychiatrists were reserved for “crazy” people, and “crazy” people were institutionalized, never to be seen again. “Melancholy” was just something that you had to get over on your own; by looking at the bright side of life, and getting more sunshine, I guess.

So “get over it” I did. Four weeks passed by where I felt more alive than dead, and then sunshine crept through my window a little more until I felt well enough to get back to my routines. I began living life again, but a little piece of me was gone, irreparably broken, never to see the light of day. There was always a darkness present as I grew up; a dread, a conspicuous entity that followed me around and tried to convince me that life had no purpose, that I had no purpose, that everything was worthless.

At sixteen years old I had my first alcoholic drink and my life, once again, changed forever. Alcohol was the only thing that had successfully been able to quiet the noise in my mind. For the first time, I could see the full colors of existence. I had enough inner peace to focus on the most minute details of life without anxiety getting in the way. I was able to smile without fear, talk without regret, and enjoy breathing without pressure on my chest. All of a sudden life had colors; it was vibrant. I wanted to hold on to that feeling for as long as I could, as it was as close to being happy as I had ever gotten. What I didn’t know back then was that alcohol had a price in exchange for that happiness, and that price was much higher than I could have ever foreseen.

I quickly became a heavy drinker, relying on alcohol as a medicine to curb my anxiety, to make me more social, and to help me solve my problems. In the morning, if I was dreading going to work, I would have a couple of drinks to be able to get through the day. If I was nervous about talking to a girl, I would have a couple of drinks to become the stud I thought she wanted me to be. If my friends invited me to a party, I would drink before I got there to be social enough once I was surrounded by people. If I was going to watch television, well, isn’t a movie that much better when you have a decent buzz?

Quickly, and without realizing it, my life started to fall apart. I lost job after job and blamed it on the work environments. I lost friends and relationships and became convinced that no one was good enough for me. I had an excuse for everything, but I could never see that the problem was me.

After years of self-destruction, I had nothing. Eventually, I became addicted to Xanax and cocaine, and that’s when my life truly spiraled in a way that I could never have imagined. It was when I ended up in a psychiatric hospital, with no more excuses left, that I had no choice but to start wondering if all this destruction was not caused by outside forces, but that I had brought it on myself. And then, with a sober and clear mind, I realized how lost I had been for most of my life.

One of the most difficult things I ever did was reconstructing myself from the ashes, but if a phoenix can do it, so could I. I had to pick up whatever pieces I had left and start taking responsibility for my behavior. Initially, I had to revisit and understand that 8-year-old kid with depression, why he had felt that way, and what I could do now to amend it. It was excruciating to relive some of the darkest moments of my life, but incredibly necessary. Then, I had to come to grips with my relationship with alcohol and drugs, and I had to learn how to replace them with actual coping mechanisms for my depression and anxiety.

Today, I spend a great deal of my time trying to educate others about the characteristics of anxiety and depression, especially in young children. I realize that if mental illness hadn’t been so stigmatized a couple of decades ago, maybe I would’ve had a chance at better treatment and a better life. We have to talk to our kids about how they are feeling, what they are going through and what steps we can take to resolve it. We can no longer live in a society that brushes these things under the rug and never talks about them because, years later, we will be faced with the negative results.

There is no shame in having mental health challenges. The courageous thing is to try to get the necessary treatment, and not allow the darkness to creep into our souls. The world has many challenges, and it always will. But human beings can see so many colors, and we have the privilege of enjoying all of them.