I'm tired of pretending not to be depressed

[nadine_mn]

By nature I am an optimistic, happy, jovial person - even in the worst of times, I find a silver lining. My husband is a realist with pessimistic tendencies - I have to point out the positive. It works - a lot of times he helps me find balance and I help him look at things with hope.

But, my humor and happy demeanor are also how I hide stuff and how I coped with living with a mother with Narcissistic Personality Disorder - I could never show negative emotion unless she wanted me to in case it reflected poorly on her.

So if I am not bubbly, everyone asks what's wrong (my whole life and I'm 45) - but they never really want to know what's wrong, they just want me to be the joker, the happy one in the group.

It has become so second nature to hide how I feel, I don't really know I am doing it - my therapy sessions (with a therapist I adore and who recognizes this) I joke around a lot because I don't want him to feel bad. Then I worried that maybe I wasn't healing or improving fast enough so I just start lying on those little depression intake sheets you fill out - worried that it would reflect poorly on his skills as a doctor that he couldn't fix me. When I finally told him that he was upset that I would worry more about that than myself.

When I was in group therapy, the few times I openly shared what I was feeling - other people started crying so I stopped that (not realizing it until later) and took a more dark humor approach to talk about stuff.

My depression is really bad right now - I am not actively suicidal, but at the point if a doctor told me I had a month to live I would be relieved. My husband is the sole provider to our little household of me, him our cat and dog. He is pretty stressed with work so I try not to let him know how bad things are. When I do - he gets upset, and the last thing I want is to add to his stress.

Our medical insurance is shitty and doesn't cover mental health visits so I haven't seen my therapist since May (at $250 a pop, on top of all our other bills, it just isn't feasible) and I know that is factoring in.

We lost our 16 yr old Black lab back in May, and sweet mother of Mary I am taking that way harder than expected.

I just want to be able to cry, to have bad days, to not smile every 5 minutes. So instead, I sleep - I sleep up to 20 hrs a day or play games, anything to not have to engage in with anyone.

I'm so tired - tired of struggling with depression, struggling with my weight, struggling with physical pain..and of course I feel like shit even mentioning any of this when there are millions of people in more need (the entire island of Puerto Rico).

I just needed to vent - to just say what's been on my mind for awhile.

I'll be ok, I'll cuddle my pets, I'll listen to some music maybe even putter in the kitchen. But right now I just needed to cry.