30 Days Without Crying in the Club.

My first month on Wellbutrin.

I have always been so big on mental health. On doing all that you can to get better. But I was also someone who thought if I talk about it enough maybe one day it’ll go away. I have been struggling since the birth of my son. My life changed. I wasn’t able to do the same things. I was responsible for another human being. Me. Someone who could barely take care of herself. Even at 27, I felt like a teen mom. I figured because it was postpartum depression, I would eventually just get over it. I realize that it was so much more than that. I finally sat down with my thoughts and realized that it was so much bigger. The only thing that postpartum did was give me the time to sit down and truly think about all the things that were wrong. I wrote a whole book about it. (Go buy it. It’s on Amazon.) I tried so many things. Psychedelic therapy, that helped me learn what was wrong. But I did not use that information for anything. I didn’t use that knowledge to start fixing anything. I lost the weight, assuming that all my sadness and all my depression was because I was a size that I had never been before. 50 pounds later I was skinny, but I was still depressed.

I realized that I just could not do this by myself. No matter how hard I tried I just could not figure it out. I spoke to my doctor and she said it hasn’t been working your way, we have to get you on something and that’s when she prescribed Wellbutrin. I was nervous. Being depressed has been my personality for so many years. It’s all I talked about, it’s how I related to people. It was my entire personality. I feared that without it, I wouldn’t know who I was, but I just could not be sad anymore.

I started the pills and I instantly felt a difference. I was able to focus, I was able to work, was able to get up in the morning and do my routine get to work, focus at work. Get home. Cook, shower, and get ready for bed without thinking twice about it. Within the first week, I was doing things that I struggled to get done for years. Years before I was even pregnant. It’s like the pills turned off the depression and turned on the productivity. Of course there were some side effects. I struggled to sleep a little bit. Another side effect was appetite suppression, which is great actually. I got some minor headaches the first week. Besides those things, I was good. I had no complaints. I wasn’t crying all the time. I wasn’t so focused on acknowledging the little things that were just that, little things. I was able to truly focus on the things that were important without the noise in my head telling me that I wasn’t enough, that there was no reason for me to do these things because I was going to be a depressed loser forever. It quieted the noise that was taking over my life.

At first, I felt like a failure. I felt as if I couldn’t do it on my own. I wrote blogs, I wrote a book. I tried therapies, I tried waking up and praying it away but I just could not talk or think or write my way out of this. I felt like someone who wasn’t strong enough and had to turn to pills. Now that it’s been a month that I’ve been on these meds, I realize that I am not a failure for needing the help. I see myself as someone on a long road trip who has decided to let someone else drive while I rest. The pills are doing a phenomenal job at helping me continue to heal and take care of myself. I am able to be a better mom, a better wife, better at my job, kinder to the people around me. I’m able to take time to truly focus on myself and my growth and filling my cup because the meds are essentially my administrative assistant doing all the important little things while I do the big job. It helps me focus so I can do what I need to do. It quiets the voices so I can get stuff done. It’s not doing all the work, I’m not just sitting back you know, It makes life just a little easier. That’s all.

So when I tell people just take the meds. I don’t mean get on the same medication as me. What I mean is just get the help. Don’t try to do it all yourself. It’s OK to need help. It’s OK to get help. Whatever that looks like for you. Antidepressants, therapy, the gym, healing your gut. You don’t need to try to fix it by yourself. It doesn’t make you weak. But just so you know, you will not wake up one day and magically be better. It takes a lot of work. I am someone who shouts from the rooftops “Depression sucks.” “Death to depression!” I feel no shame in the decision that I made to get on the medication. This has been the greatest 30 days of my life. I am excited to continue this journey. I am excited for all the new things I’ll be able to do now that it’s quiet up there. Just take the meds, just take care of yourself, don’t feel shame because you’re not well. So many of us aren’t. But there’s help, there’s resources, you don’t have to choose to do it on your own.