I'd have to say that suicidal depression was when my life truly began. Prior to that, it was pretty easy to deny that anything was going awry in my head. Yeah, I had a history of staying awake for 48 hours straight sans speed, and I did have some self-injury tendencies, and my marriage was rocky before rock bottom, and my employment status was iffy - but as far as I was concerned, all was within the realm of normal.
A little background might help you make sense of this:
I was born to upper middle-class parents and raised in a rural town. I was told that my parents were ecstatic about my birth, despite my dad later admitting I may or may not have been a surprise. Unfortunately, my mother was diagnosed with some form of Schizophrenia when I was three, and my parents' marriage started to dissolve. It was the late '80's, and antipsychotic treatment was a bit more unpleasant than it is now - not that it is all that pleasant currently. Typical antipsychotic dosages tended to be really high, and taking Clozaril can really suck for some people. Coupled with Reagan's slashing of mental health funds, it was a recipe for badness for a woman who had been showing signs of Schizophrenia for years prior.
My dad had a pretty good job with pretty good benefits, so he made it a point to get my mother into the best treatment that was affordable. Still, mental health treatment sucked royally, and my mom wasn't all that interested in it anyway. I'm not entirely sure to this day how much of her reluctance to medications and therapy is the result of her mental health challenges, or the result of being a jerk who lacked empathy. I don't say this as a person who is all hung up about my mother having the stuff she has - I've met plenty of people of different ages with her diagnosis who are great people to be around, and it's not like I don't have my own crap to deal with - it's more complicated. She has a history of self-sabotage and being all around cruel to blood relatives, and I can't help but wonder if there's a bit more to her issues than what's on the surface. Friends of her side of the family have (tactfully) said she wasn't all that nice of a person to be around, though both sides of my family said she was an absolute darling. Who knows.
Anyway, my dad was well-known in his field: published, taught a few classes here and there, and worked for a nationally recognized company. He ended up using alcohol to cope with the mess that was home. It wasn't long before CPS was in and out of our house, my parents were frequently in court to try to keep custody of me, our house looked like something out of Hoarders, drug use, me being neglected, and my mother taking off for days or weeks without telling anyone. My dad's career took a downturn until he entered treatment for extreme alcohol use. When that happened, my mom had moved several states away to stay with her family. My dad's brother and his wife had temporary custody of me until he got his shit together. After getting sober, my dad had full custody of me until I was eighteen.
Needless to say, psych issues weren't looked upon kindly in my household. My dad never quite recovered from losing my mom. He had some trauma issues to begin with, and I think the beyond helpful sadness he experienced never stopped. He had some OCD-ish tendencies as well. The house didn't get cleaned, well, ever, and I didn't have friends over because of that. It was pounded into my head not to tell anyone about the condition of our house. It ended up being a source of shame for me, and there were guilt trips along the way by my dad and his side of the family. There were some other issues, but I think the house was the big one.
I didn't come out of any of this unscathed. I was self-injuring, making cracks about suicide, weeping nightly, sleep walking, avoiding friendships, and dissociating starting in elementary school. I was pretty smart, though, so I think teachers assumed my dad got life under control after he got treatment. I mean, kids who get A's and aren't violent can't have a fucked up home life, right?
To address CPS's decision to keep me in the home: I don't know the reason why. I'm going to guess that it was the lesser of two evils. The foster care system is pretty wretched, and who would want to adopt a six year old born to a mother with Schizophrenia? No one else in the family felt able to take me permanently (one even admitted that to me a few months ago), and where else was I going to go? I don't know if that was the best thing to do or not.
Time passed. I wasn't an overly rowdy teenager - I was pretty terrified of dying a painful death, which kept a lot of my impulse control checked (another post). I was moody, more so than a lot of kids my age. And unmotivated. And felt hopeless. For reason I'm going to assume now was hypomania, I changed my mind about wanting to buy a manufactured home and get a factory job after high school and decided to go to college. My grades sucked, so I couldn't get into a university - community college for me.
My dad didn't let me drive or work. I had nine hundred bucks in my bank account, savings from years of Christmas and birthday checks. I met a guy, dated him for three months, and then moved in with him three weeks after I graduated high school.
Yeah, that went well.
I got a job, a driver's license, and kicked the bastard out of my apartment a year after we moved in together. I never went back home. I had a roommate, who helped out with the bills and was consistent with that. I soon met another guy, who turned out to be the complete opposite of the idiots I dated in high school.
I graduated with honors and got married shortly after graduation. I didn't have the best job, but it paid alright and didn't honestly look bad on my resume. I was attempting to become a technical writer, and I volunteered my time as a grant writer in between working at a call center.
It didn't take long for me to crash, and crash hard. I noticed I was feeling a little down and exhausted towards the end of college, but I assumed it was senioritis. Three days after I got married, I had hives that mysteriously appeared. Sex drive went in the toilet. Insomnia. Muscle pain.
And then I made jokes about jumping out of windows.
And then I prayed I would get cancer or get in a terrible car accident.
And then I started throwing out stuff.
And then I wanted to end it myself.
I usually say it was my cats who saved me. I didn't trust my husband to keep my cats until they died, and I couldn't imagine the thought of them having to adjust to life in a new home. In all honestly, I likely didn't care for the idea of dying when the possibility felt intensely real. But I needed something to cling to, and my cats were it.
We didn't have health insurance during our first six months of marriage. My husband found a job with good coverage, and I dragged my feet on making an appointment with someone for another six months. After my husband questioning whether or not our marriage was over a few times, I went to see a family doctor. She told me I needed therapy and a psychiatrist immediately, though I conveniently left out the part about suicidal thinking. I can be a decent actress if I need to be.
I sat across from a therapist. I said few sentences during the intake appointment. One of them was refusing to get a referral to a psychiatrist because I was afraid medication would kill me and I didn't want to be like my mother. The therapist looked at me and said, "I have depression and I take an antidepressant. What's your point?"
I cannot tell you how great it was to hear from someone who came off as confident, empathetic, and happy and had a psych diagnosis. That kept me going for the three weeks it took for me to quit being stubborn about meds (I did not admit to suicide plotting), the absurd appointment with a different family doctor about getting an antidepressant ("Did your therapist suggest anything? Lexapro? Sounds good!"), and the slew of med changes that would follow over the next year.
Because my marriage was rocky and life all around sucked, my therapist told me to take a vacation with my husband. I had to kick my husband's ass into therapy as well, because it turned out he was experiencing his own delightful issues.
On the first night of our vacation, I stood in front of the hotel bathroom mirror with a Lexapro tablet in my hand. Thinking back to the copy of Alice in Wonderland my favorite aunt had mailed me in middle school during a summer she was fighting with my mom (Yes, my mom had visitation rights), I remembered a picture of Alice falling down a rabbit hole. With that image, I put my first psychiatric medication in my mouth and took one long, terrified swallow, along with a fear that the next morning would be entirely different.
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