I Just Don't Know

Hello my faithful readers. That is if anyone actually still checks the blog for updates, which I realize have been few and far between. And not very exciting. Things are not going so well lately. It seems our little friend Mandy is having a bout of depression. Something I haven't really dealt with for ten years. I mean I have my funks, things have upset me, but it's different this time. Clinical. I hate that word. I hate everything surrounding clinical depression. I hate having it. I hate that it exists. I hate taking medicine for it. I hate telling people about it. I hate people who don't have it and get all smug about whether or not someone actually needs drugs to deal with it. Last time I was diagnosed clinically depressed was my first year out of high school. And I was depressed. Really depressed. And I had reason to be. I lived in a tiny little community college village outside of Cedar Rapids with a bunch of rednecks, was flunking out of school, sleeping until one o'clock and watching TV all day. I took medicine then. The same stuff I just got prescribed now. And I got better. I pulled my life together then stopped taking the medicine and felt fine. I felt like maybe I just didn't know how to live life before and that's how come I got depressed. I didn't know that it felt good to clean the kitchen and go to class and write a really good paper and excercize and cook and have hobbies. So I got depressed. But after I got better I knew what to do, knew what I needed in order to be happy. So I should be forever. Right? And for a long time that worked. Though I hit some bumps, made some fairly poor decisions, I was doing alright for myself. Generally happy and easygoing despite poverty and incurable wanderlust. But suddenly the other day I got up to get ready for my new job waiting tables (I had quit the day care job for it) and just couldn't go. I started to cry. And I didn't stop crying. I couldn't stop crying. My eyes swelled. My chest heaved. I was afraid of my balcony and locked the door. I had to go to an urgent care mental health clinic (the free one for poor people) to make myself stop crying. But being there made it worse. People asking me if I was okay made me sob louder. A woman with an eye twitch told me I had a pretty hair color in the lobby and that made me cry. They put me in a little waiting room of my own so I wouldn't have to keep crying in front of everyone. Finally they brought me some tissues and all the Zoloft they could throw at me and asked me, "Damn, what's wrong?" And the only thing I could muster up, the only logical answer that I had and the pure and honest truth was, "I don't know."