This ain't Disneyland

Warning: Long, boring and personal. Read at your own discretion.

I've talked a little bit about my issues with depression. It's one of the reasons I started to blog in the first place, because I wanted a forum, and this one felt comfortable to me. As more people are reading this now, people I know and see often, I've grown a little more apprehensive about what I will write. But I want this to be a place of truth for me, so I want to write a little about what I've been going through.

My cycles of depression vary greatly, each usually lasting anywhere from two weeks to a month. I will be fine and content for a while, and either something will happen or the winds will just shift, and I get low. And then suddenly for a couple of days, I will be so low that I am actively weeping (not around the kids) and wondering how I'm going to get out of the dregs. After that passes, I'll be content again (barely content, or shall we say on "autopilot"), and that will last until... You get the picture.

I'm really pondering this now because I had the strangest experience today. I was at home with the boys, watching Oprah, which I seriously never do, and of course parts of it were so inspiring I got really weepy. (What is it with that show?) After that, I was on this really weird "high," I guess you would call it. I was all cheerful and stuff. Weird. Even when I'm really happy, I'm never really what you would call "cheerful." I turned on some music, and was dancing with the boys and we were having a lot of fun. Tears would even spring to my eyes randomly, kind of like tears of happiness. Then just as quickly as my "high" sprung up, I deflated. Just all the sudden, I was so low. There was nothing specific, just a "bla." A bad one. It was like my usual cycle, condensed into a period of less than 45 minutes. This has never happened to me before, although I am depressed quite a lot. I'm just so tired of it. And while I have nothing against drugs at all, seriously, I support them wholeheartedly as long as they aren't being over diagnosed, I just don't want to take them while I'm still breastfeeding, safe though it may be. I want to try for another baby when Fynn turns 18 months old, so that's coming up pretty quickly, and I especially don't want to be on anything while pregnant.

While I was thinking about my strange experience today, I was trying to piece the puzzle together, and I think it comes down to what I ate, seriously. I had gotten hungry for a snack, and had a Coke with some crackers. As much as I drink Coke, I don't ever do it randomly. It's always either with lunch or dinner. So it was a rarity to just snack on some Coke. And I believe in the body/food connection whole-heartedly. First, have you ever see "Super Size Me?" You must, if you haven't. Anyway, about two weeks into his experiment, he says that he starts to get depressed and down. Then there is a woman in my ward whose children have serious food allergies, and she discovered she does as well. Once she changed her diet, her depression and mood swings greatly diminished. Also, even now if she eats chocolate, even a little bit, she says she spirals into this funk where she turns really mean and sad.

So, I may try to research some sort of "depression diet," checking into the connections between food and emotions. And if I can muster up the willpower, I want to do a trial diet change to see how my coping skills and moods improve. I just want to feel solid and happy regularly, not occasionally. Forgive me for laying this all on your lap. But if you've read this far and find yourself really bored and irritated at this post, you should have heeded my warning at the beginning. So it's all your fault. :)