struggling

I seem to be struggling with a lot of things lately.  I'm not quite sure how to describe it. Things don't make sense in my head, so I'm sure it won't make sense on the blog. Sorry for that.

After Paxton was born, my emotional well-being kind of fell apart. The crying and anxiety was out of control. My doctor and family all agreed. I started an anti-depressant and things changed, for the better, in a quick way. However, over time, I wasn't happy. I wasn't happy with how things were going. And in "things" I mean, my life, my feelings, my emotions, my anxiety. I was on this medication for almost a year but decided to wean myself off. When I initially started, my doctor felt it might be something I needed only short term. So, I decided to stop taking it and see where I was at. Wow! I was not in a good place. This summer was horrible for me (emotionally). I was crying over E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G!! I didn't even know what I was crying for, I was just always crying. And my anxiety, again, out of control. I (and my family) knew I needed to be put back on some sort of medication. Not necessarily what I took the first time around, but something. I know there are numerous options out there for anti-depressants, and I knew we could find something that worked for me, and we had to find it before I started back to school. Because let's face it, I'm still depressed and still have anxiety. I wasn't able to see my doctor as soon as I was hoping, so the nurse gave me another option and scheduled me an appointment with a psychologist at Sanford Women's. Great! She could get me in in 2 days. I was excited about the plan. So there I sat, on her oversized, plush, leather couch, blubbering my eyes out for an hour. I liked it though. Everything she said made sense to me. We discussed different medication options and she made the recommendation to my doctor. I am now on a new medication, however I can't say I'm overly pleased, yet, bummer!  It's something that I've been increasing the dosage, and I've only been on the full dose for about 2 weeks. I am experiencing some pretty unpleasant horrible side effects though. Now I understand that all medications have side effects, that's why I'm willing to continue with it. I'm just hoping they don't last a whole lot longer. But I still struggle with how I'm feeling. And I can't decide why.

But let me tell you people, struggling with mental health is exhausting! What I've come to realize though after the past several months is, that being depressed is not the result of personal weakness and it is not caused by something you did "wrong." It is treatable. And boy am I ready to get back to being "myself."