How to become horribly depressed (pt. 1)

For future reference

How to slowly subsume yourself in harrowing darkness. @crumbsanddubs

Dear Future Depressed Fern,

Holy fuck. You were in a dark, deep, black hole for 2 months and 6 days. You spent about 6 weeks struggling with disorganized thinking and inability to speak/express yourself. You weren’t catatonic like that 2021 episode, thankfully. But there were a lot of quiet dinners between you and B, lots of saying “I don’t know” and not being able to make the simplest, lowest-stakes of decisions. This was definitely in the Top 5 of worst episodes.

Yet a few weeks ago, you started to see the light. Three weeks ago you started to feel good. At this moment, you feel great. How did this happen? How did we let it get so bad?

Let me remind you.

You stopped taking your medication

Remember how you and B wanted to try to conceive, so you stepped off the Depakote and Seroquel with your psychiatrist and therapist’s green light? Well that was not a good idea.

It was until it wasn’t, rather. You were okay for about 1.5 months, using every tool in your toolkit to try staying stable and not get hypomanic. But a couple months in, your mood started elevating quickly. We know this because you couldn’t sleep longer than 4-5 hours to save your life. You were doing the best you could: taking your sleep stack (magnesium, inositol, and apigenin); bought pricey blue-light blocking glasses to use for laptop work, doing grounding meditation every morning without fail.

None of it worked because there’s something chemically atypical going on in your brain. Particularly the way your body handles stress, dopamine feedback loops, and serotonin. For some people, lifestyle adjustments and practices help but they don’t cut it. You are one of those people, although it’s taken forty years of nightmarish depressions —including this one — to admit it and accept it.

Let’s give flowers where they’re due though: you lasted 7 months off-meds. You didn’t need to be hospitalized. That’s because you live a charmed, quite privileged life by any measurement. Staying out of the hospital is something to be proud of. It shows diligence and dedication that you were in a more-or-less contained hypomanic episode for over 3 months!

But don’t ever go off your meds again.

What happened next, you wouldn’t wish upon even Hitler

You experienced a severe, near-catatonic, mildly psychotic depressive episode. For over 2 months.

It was like someone punched the lights out of the language centers of your brain. Your brain was suddenly like a knit sweater that unraveled, yarn exploding every which way in a tangled mess. You could barely speak. Texting people a single line of response took almost an hour due to fighting the shame, guilt, and worthlessness that were uprising in you.

At the worst of it, your brain was screaming that you don’t deserve to live, and that you make life a nightmare for everyone around you. The only way out was through… suicide.

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Hi, there. I’m conflicted about paywalling anything that might help someone feel or live better. And, I would love to pay the bills as a writer/author someday.

My current thinking is I might paywall any post that mentions suicidality and other shadow topics. This is for the benefit of anyone who doesn’t want to read about that during a casual scroll-through.

If you want to be privy to my boundless heart-mind, you’re welcome to become a paid subscriber (you cute weirdo).

If you want full access but cannot afford it right now, please write to me at manicpixiereal@gmail.com. We will figure it out.

Otherwise, there are plenty of stories and tools I’ll offer free. Thank you so much for being here.

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