depression is not normal

I think some people think that being depressed is just a normal part of life. When I have told people I am depressed most of them say oh but why...you have such a wonderful family, healthy kids blah blah blah...well DUHHHHHHHHH.....it is because I have an illness called depression. If my kids were sick or my husband was dead and I was depressed, that would be NORMAL....when your life is going well and your kids are healthy and you have food and a house and you still feel depressed, that is ABNORMAL, you have an illness. By telling me that I should feel blessed and should be happy becase look at this person or that person who has all these bad things going on and I am soo lucky and I should be happy...HELLOOOO that is like telling a person with a broken leg that they should get up and walk...I have an illness. I know I am lucky, I know I am blessed, yet I still feel like life sucks...and of course I feel guilty when people point out how blessed I should feel.
I think people are confused in the fact that mental illness is still an illness, a sickness, a disease. It is nothing we have done wrong. People would never tell somebody with cancer to just get over it, but people have the nerve to say that to people with depression.
Luckily I have simple depression, not bipolar. My depression seems to come and go with really no rhyme or reason. Often my depression is not in a form that people would even realize that anything was wrong, unless it was somebody who knew me really well. I do not cry or seem sad, I do not think of suicide. I usually just do not care about anything. I do not care about how I look, if I change my clothes, I do not care or even know what day or the week it is. I could spend the entire day sleeping. The days that I am depressed I also seem to not want to eat. I just do not want to bother to take the time to make anything and no food sounds good. Too bad I have not lost any weight. I have actually gained lots from the medications I am on.
I was thinking some more the other day about what sort of symptoms I had of anxiety when I was a kid, and the more I thought of it the more I realized that I was a really depressed kid. I hid it well but I did have symptoms of it that I can even remember now. I also wrote this awful awful dark poems. Poems about me living in a box, or dying and bleeding and nobody caring. Poems about me being worthless and unloved. I saved the poems in a notebook and was reading some of them the other day. I can not believe that people who read them when I was younger never looked into me being depressed. In 9th grade I took a creative writing class and lots of these poems are from my class journal and was read and graded by the teacher. Even though here was mentions of harming my self and lots of saddness in the poems, she never questioned me, never sent me to see the school counselor, never contacted my parents etc. I also used to have quite a few of the poems hanging on a corkboard in my room....again, nobody ever asked me if I was depressed.
I also had odd sicknesses, injuries, bruises etc that I had caused myself. Looking back, this started about ag 13 and lasted until my early 20's....I will write a post later detailing some of the things I did to punish myself or to get attention, I think mostly to get attention...

Rough times and learning to have faith

The past 2 months or so have been on and off rough. I feel like the higher dose of meds is finally fully kicked in. I am happy with the decrease of the panic attacks but do not feel as if the medication is working as well as I would want it to. It controls my anxiety some but not as much as I was controlled last year on a lower dose. Of course now I also am aware of just how fast a med can stop working and that I could wake up tommorow with the medication not working and have to start over again. This scares the crap out of me. I can not deal with the panic attacks and try to take care of my kids at the same time. I wish I had some family or friends I could count on to help me out if I had a setback. I really do not have anybody who I know would help me out if I needed it. Everybody is busy and has thier own life and I am sure people do not understand what it is I deal with. Each night I get scared to go to sleep because I worry what the next day will bring. Will I wake up in a panic attack? will I be sick? will I be ok? The mornings are slowly getting better for me. Those are usually the roughest and now they are somewhat better.
The dr just re-prescribed me wellbutrin 150mg to start again. I am having bouts of what I would call * just not giving a damn* Not really depression but just not really caring and a bit of feeling sorry for myself added in.
I have worked on some things. I have done some rather large size sewing orders of doll stuff. I have listed some stuff on ebay. I did actually go out and get my eyebrows waxed the other day and am enjoying my new collection of bare minerals makeup.
I also am trying to be faithful and believe that GOD has a purpose and a plan for me. My friend D comes over every week and she has been a huge blessing to me. I now count the days of the week based on her visit. It helps the days not each be the same. I used to love having friends and it helps to have somebody come over. We finished the bible study the purppose driven life and I learned so much from that. I then got baptised and am very happy about that decision. I do firmly believe that there is a GOD and that I will go to heaven and that there is a purpose to everything.
Right now we are watching a series each week based on a lady that had suffered from depression for many years. She is now on medication and she did a dvd based on her faith. It really makes sense and each week gives me something to think about. The week before last really was a good message and it was to live life to the fullest. I am still stuck on that a bit because I am not sure what the fullest is. I see people who have these huge ambitions. Plans to climb mountains or ride bikes across the country. To me that is living life in the fullest but those are not things that I could do. I guess before I can live life to the fullest I need to figure out what it is that it means. I would love to get out but I am not sure where to...I also worry that if I do live life to the fullest if I have a setback with my anxiety that it will just make it all that much worse for me to deal with.
My current definition of a good day is making it through the day without a panic attack. I am slowly doing more though. I have cooked dinners for 2 weeks now and have made meal plans. I have planned out and am almost done with shopping for Christmas gifts.
I guess I need to have some ambition and some energy and to decide what I want to do with my life. I feel like I have wasted just about 5 years of my life and I can not get those back. Maybe I will make it a goal to list 5 things that I want to accomplish in the next 6 months.