Real Nerd Talk: My Struggle With Depression

​Written by Shae Rufe

So, some of you may still know me and others may not, and that’s alright. Hi! My name is Shae and I haven’t been able to write for several months now. I used to write for this site frequently, but sadly this last July my brain literally just shut down. I’m hoping that writing this will help me clear my head and get some things out. Maybe you guys will want to read this, maybe you won’t, either way it’s kind of nice to just…vent? Purge? Both? Alright, what brought this all on? What’s been going on with Shae? A lot. A lot of things have happened so...life blog time!
 
In July of 2015, I happened to lose a very important person in my life. My grandfather was more than that in a lot of ways. I didn’t grow up like a lot of people with happy parents and a white picket fence and a dog. Fortunately, my biological father bailed when I was about two, not that he was in my life much up to that point anyway. So, my grandpa kind of stepped up. We were close, really close, and I spent a lot of time at my grandparents' house. I looked up to my grandpa in such an amazing way; needless to say when he passed away in my arms that fateful day in July I was crushed. The whole thing was unexpected, as most deaths are, and I will not lie, I was a delusional person who never thought he would die. I wish that was true, still to this day. Part of my soul died with him, and most of me changed in a way I don’t think anyone expected.
 
The thing about grieving that nobody tells you is that you experience all the ‘stages’ at once. It’s not a step by step thing. One minute you’re sitting there and you’re overcome with this horrid awful feeling so you sob uncontrollably. The next you’re so angry you want to just punch a hole in the wall, while still crying, and you’re bargaining with whatever and anything to just make it all better again. Acceptance is the one that still eludes me some days. I feel its more of a resigned weird sense. It’s not like you’ve accepted what’s happened, you just sort of go….’okay, I guess this is life now.’ But it’s anger, depression, bargaining, and massive amounts of denial.
 
Well, I am still riding the depression train for a multitude of reasons. So, I lost my hero, my idol, and the most important person in my life, and then a few weeks later my best friend started dating a guy. Which, legit, didn’t bug me for the reasons you’re probably thinking. I was happy for her, very much so, but I was also mad. I was mad because I was hurting and she’s off being happy and not at all effected by what I was going through. I guess the thing I didn’t want to admit at that time was we were drifting. We spent a lot less time together, we spoke less, there had been a rift growing between the two of us for quite some time. Friendship breakups are the hardest to go through. That has its own stages, with mostly a lot of denial, but the truth is sometimes friends just drift.
 
Anger is not a stranger to me. I’m legally blind and live in this weird purgatory like state where I am blind enough that I can’t drive or really fit in with sighted people and I am sighted enough where I don’t fit in with other visually impaired people. I’m highly functioning and its literally one of the worst things to deal with. Especially when you’re a fiercely independent person. I am very used to anger. Sometimes you do have a lot of anger when you feel your closest friend or friends pulling away from you. I totally felt that last year. I even confronted her about it several times…and then last March I got a phone call from a truly amazing best friend (I had more than one at the time) who broke some hard news to me, she was no longer going to be my friend or my roommate. She was moving out of the apartment and out of my life. The drift was complete, the rift between us had grown too great and that was that. I was alone and left with an apartment to myself.

However, there's no way I could afford that rent on my own, because rent prices in Colorado, ouch, and nothing makes you feel more like a failure than having to move into your parents' house at the age of 30 because you have an enormous amount of student loan debt for a degree you’re not using, while working at a hotel and desperately trying to get your financial life into order. Not being able to drive, totally helps too. So, that is where life has led me. I am currently living in an apartment attached to my parents' house that belonged to my grandpa. I’m actually sitting on his couch right now as I write my first blog in nearly six months, trying to sort my head out. I know that there are a lot of people who suffer with depression too, and for that I’m sorry. I have no idea what I am doing with my life.
 
I’m oddly okay with that.
 
It’s okay to not know. It’s okay to struggle and feel like the world is out to get you because maybe sometimes it is. What about navigating life and grief and depression? I'm still learning that myself. I have two modes when it comes to things that make me happy; binge on them until I can't anymore or just not deal with it. I watched all of Stephen Universe, which was only on two season at the time, in literally two days. I watched Miraculous Ladybug in a day and I caught up on Sailor Moon Crystal with one episode a month because more than that was too much effort. On my DVR is the entire 12th season of Supernatural unwatched. It's not because I don't love the show, I do obsessively love that show, I just...can't bring myself to watch it. I have watched the show This Is Us at least 5 times since it's aired earlier this fall. My other vice became food videos. I literally would lay in bed and just watch Tasty videos on Facebook for hours, until I fell asleep. I still do that. The downside to that those videos made me think I could be an amazing baker. Alright, I'm already half decent at that; I can't decorate to save my life, but I'm really good at baking. I rapidly learned that the easiest things came from a box but the most fun came from a lot of bags and messes in the kitchen. Baking has its downsides, you eat the things you make and sometimes you gain a lot of weight trying to chase away the sad...which doesn't help your self esteem when your pants stop fitting.

The thing with depression is it doesn't just go away on its own and it often comes and stays and brings its friend anxiety. I can't tell you how much my anxiety flared up, but it did and I had no idea how to stop it. I still suffer from it. I am probably the worst friend because I will make plans and then cancel on people because the idea of leaving my room is overwhelmingly scary. Or the anxiety of just being out in public is way too much. The thing about depression and anxiety too is you end up losing a lot of people you thought were friends. Some of it is my own fault, but when all you have to say is "I'm really sad" all the time people get fed up and they just drift. I also am not going to lie, my memory is nothing like it used to be. I've no idea what I ate for breakfast half the time let alone anything else. Of course I remember big important things, but little things? Like where I left something or things that aren't as prevalent are really hard. I'm forgetful, which annoys a lot of people I'm sure. I mix things up a lot and often that's with people too. It's not on purpose, yet it's insulting all the same when you ask someone how their boyfriend is only to be reminded that they're married. Or when you ask someone how school is when they graduated forever ago. It's embarrassing and hard and all you want to do is make things right, but...

I feel off, a lot. My relationships with a lot of friends aren't what they used to be. There's a disconnect and I cannot seem to figure out how to reconnect. I know it's me, I'm the spark plug that's bent and trying to fit into a slot I used to fit perfectly into, because car analogies make perfect sense right now. It's weird, I guess is the perfect answer. It's really hard to rely on others when someone so close to you abandoned you. It's hard to reconnect with people when you're still damaged on the inside, even if you're smiling, and it's hard to try and be who you were when that's not you anymore. My group of friends is impossibly small and intimate now and I love that. The people I feel most comfortable with are those who know most of the dark little bits, and they stayed. Going through change of any kind is hard for anyone. I used to love change and now I can't stand it. Change isn't always good, or bad, sometimes it is just there. How I react to it is completely different than how someone else would. Learning to accept that is the hardest thing anyone can do.

As people we are all different. Our reactions to things are different, always. With 2016 behind me, I wonder if 2017 will be better. The truth is, I don't know and that terrifies me. I do know this, though, I can only make peace with what's happened the last year and a half and learn to move on. I'm never going to get proper closure on the friend who moved out on me. I'm never going to get my grandfather back, and I'm never going to be able to go back and change any of it. Maybe I can learn how to function differently. I may not be the person I once used to be, but I can work on making the person I am now better. 
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After all, what didn't kill me made me stronger, right?

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