Tonight’s lesson on my depression: People often ask me what motivated me to serve as the APO Section 85 Chair for two years after serving on the same staff for two prior, why I became a Firefighter/EMT, and why I focus on community service events so much in my life. It started out because I wanted to fill as much of my time as possible doing respectable things instead of spending all of my time at a bar drinking or possibly using drugs. I knew that if I had that many college students looking to me as a resource, I had to stay sober so that I was available for them in the event of an emergency. When it was time for me to move on from APO, I joined the firehouse. Part of my reasoning was because of the loss of a friend of mine that was in the fire service, Cecilia Turnbough. The rest of the reasoning in my mind was that it would put me in situations where I would constantly be exposed to danger and the risk of death would be higher. If I could die in a noble way, possibly saving someone else’s life, maybe I could trade my depressed life for the survival of a happy one. Having spent time counseling others with depression, I can say that I am definitely not the only one that thinks like this. If you’re depressed, you’re likely to fill your time distracting yourself with activities that earn you respect and admiration so that you can validate your existence, and you just don’t care if you die in the process because at least you will have died doing something good for others. Tonight’s update: Today has been rough again. There is something special about today that I can’t write about, but it means a lot to me and reminds me of something from the past that I cannot get back. All I can say, to everyone I know, is that I am a friend for life as long as you want me. I saw the psychiatrist this morning and my medications were adjusted. It will likely take a couple of weeks to fully adjust to the changes, and then they will be adjusted again. The initial adjustment is to help me sleep at night instead of staying awake fixated on the things in life that are keeping me down. In a couple of weeks, we will adjust the dosage of my main antidepressant in an attempt to get the chemicals in my brain working the way I’m used to again. I saw my therapist this afternoon and was completely open and honest about why I didn’t return after my first visit earlier in the year. Why was it? She suggested that I might have bipolar tendencies and I completely disagreed with her, so I wrote it off. She wanted me to see the psychiatrist and get another opinion. I was scared of the result, so I didn’t go to the appointment. Today, the psychiatrist told me that they do not think I exhibit bipolar tendencies, rather this is truly depression exasperated by recent events in life. While discussing this with my therapist, I told her that I wanted to attend an intensive outpatient program so that I can work with counselors multiple times a week and get back on track as quickly as possible. I will start that program during the first week of September. It will initially be three days a week for two weeks, for a total of six sessions. After that, I could join other groups to continue focusing on specific problems that I want to address. The thing that scares me right now is that I feel like I am getting used to being this depressed; like this is somehow my destiny and I don’t deserve happiness. I don’t want to sit around crying all of the time. I don’t want to feel empty, lonely, or isolated all of the time. I don’t want to look for others for constant validation. What DO I want? I want to feel happy, healthy, and back at the top of my game. I want to go to the firehouse and run calls because I’m damn good at what I do instead of hoping that I’ll get dispatched to a gun shot victim where I then catch a stray bullet during treatment. (It’s worth pointing out that I would NEVER jeopardize patient care or the safety of my team.) I want to be able to help others because it’s what I enjoy doing, not because I need to in order to feel like my life is worth something. I’ve been challenged by my therapist to go to an AA meeting before I see her again in two weeks, exercise semi-regularly, eat healthier, and generally take care of myself holistically instead of waiting for my depression to be resolved before I take care of myself. It seems like good advice, so lets see where this takes us.