Fairytales of a Childhood That Never Was, Episode 1

(Consider this the first in a series of posts that may or may not appear.  As I stress out about prelims and shit, I find it oddly cathartic to go back and question everything I ever knew about my own childhood.  Up first: My history with depression.)

Today, I came to the sudden conclusion that my timelines are all fucked up. And I may never be able to sort them out in any meaningful way. I'm going to talk about my history of depression again, because in a lot of ways, I'm trying to figure it out. For a while, the narrative was simple, easy, undeniable. I was depressed for years, I went on antidepressants, and I stopped being depressed.

That was a story I liked to tell because it was easy and comfortable. It never really happened like that. I could state dates, but they all get tangled up into a mess. I can't remember any more which dates go with which years, and sometimes I put them together in different orders. And the fact is, the when I put them together in some ways, they make more narrative sense than others, but I'm not really sure that's how it pans out. But I'm going to try, and I'm going to be as honest as I can.

Fact: In Third Grade, I started having panic attacks.
Truth: I wasn't fine and normal up until third grade. The first time I went hysterical, that I remember, was in first grade, I think. I read one of those books designed to scare kids away from playing with matches. At least, that's what I've been told. The book scared me, and they had to call one of my parents to pick me up from school. Maybe the fact that I was so easily scared had a connection. Or the reading. That's another common thread that gets patched into my narrative. Keep your eyes out.

Furthermore, I don't remember having panic attacks. I remember a couple of times I was scared, generally in the same circumstances to the incident in first grade. I read something or saw something that scared me so badly a parent had to come pick me up, or maybe it just lingered scared in my mind. Either way, something happened. But I don't know what to accept anymore.

My narrative likes to link these to the start of my depression, as well as my grandmother's death. Both of these are a lie. I'm not sure I can point to any particular moment as me being depressed. What I was was different. I don't recall being happier in first and second grade, or even in kindergarten and preschool. I was always an outsider, and always kind of off. But again, my memory could be lying. But both were definitely not linked, no matter how I'd like to be able to remember them. The 'panic attacks' took place early in the school year. My grandmother died on christmas day. That much is true. I'm not sure how they'd connect to each other.

Fact: I was depressed without treatment for 3 years.
Truth: I don't know if it was three years. I can't remember when I went on antidepressants. I don't specifically remember the timeline in here, but I did see a few counselors. It didn't really help. I think I went on antidepressants in 6th grade, but I can't be sure. You see, I remember them having an effect within a few days, but I can't remember what it was. And I remember the spring as being when I got Tex, but I don't know when the Zoloft relates in there. Maybe it wasn't until after 6th grade, but I remember it, as well as my asperger's diagnosis, taking place before that. I really don't know, which makes me question.

I couldn't have been 100% depressed all the time, throughout 3 years. Something must have made me happy. You can't live for 3 years without any kind of joy, right? I like to paint it that way, like I lived in books so I wouldn't have time to think about suicide, but I did other things. I learned other things. And maybe that's why I couldn't remember the change.

Maybe I wasn't depressed at all. Except I sort of remember being depressed, but that could just be a lie I've constructed. Like, maybe I wasn't looking for that. You see, it really got better, I really remember being happy, in high school, with the cabal. Maybe I was just some outcast kid who didn't belong, and they seized on the idea of depression because it might have fit. Maybe the only way my medication worked was as a placebo. And in suppressing sex drive. That's a hard version of the story to take, though, because I fundamentally remember thinking about suicide, but in this kind of involuntary, side-along way. But never intellectually, never in a gut, might-act-on-it-cause-it-seems-like-a-good-idea way. More in a way where suicide was nothing but a song stuck in my head. Which sucked, don't get me wrong, but I'm not sure it was  depression.

Fact: Zoloft worked perfectly for me.
Truth: My dosage had to be increased a few times. The first was during elementary or middle school, when it seemed to not quite be working. Like, I'd get a stray thought here and there of suicide, so up the dosage went.

The second was in, I believe, my freshman year of high school. Other narratives of my life, like the one in 4-H, run more poetically if it is, but it could have been sophomore year, too. Maybe even Junior. There was a crappy little pissing match the county hippology, and a crappy fight with my father on the way home, and then I walked outside barefoot in the snow, went back to the upstairs bathroom and cut myself. Opened a whole nasty can of worms, and most of it was freaking out because I'd actually like sliced myself open, and not because I honestly planned to do it again. My dosage doubled after that, because something was wrong with me because I was freaking the hell out because I did something stupid. Also, because I went and sliced myself open, but I'm still kind of kicking scared old me for needing my medication increased because I was freaking out like a normal person would be, instead of going along with it.

That's three facts I've disassembled, and it's taken a while. Analyzing it is still kind of hard, because I'm still piecing together a puzzle I've lost half the pieces to. But I'll let you know if I every find a concrete truth.