This is my personal blog about my journey into the world of electroconvulsive therapy. I hope it will also chronicle my eventual exit from the world of depression. I’ve been depressed a long time, am one of those with treatment-resistant depression (meaning the meds don’t work, or only work a short time), and electroconvulsive therapy is a carrot on the end of a stick for this miserable pony.

Tomorrow is the big day. The day of promise. The day of hope. Everything rests on tomorrow.

I’m filled with hope of tomorrow. Ick. Now the song from Annie is running in my head. Make it go away!

I’m not allowed a computer in the hospital, but I can smuggle in my Blackberry. My techie friend has set this up so I can send my blog in via my Blackberry. I’m not that technically proficient, but he promised it will work when I’m there. I just have to make sure I’m not caught with my illegal Blackberry.

And if I’m busted, I’ll write stuff on a hospital napkin and let my friend type it up for me. He’s a good guy. And a fag, or I’d be married to him.

It’s Saturday night and in my healthier life that would have meant having a great date with a good looking man or heading out to some clubs with my friends. But here I sit at my computer, trying my best to not picture what’s going to happen on Monday.

I’d love to have a dog but I can’t even care for myself some days. How could I care for a dog? Poor me.

I try and tell myself my life could be so much worse. I could be living inside an ugly blue burqa, trying to see life through a piece of mesh. It’s true, but it’s not true to me. My life, right now, is the worst thing on the planet. At least Muslim women in burqas really have no clue there’s a better world out there. They’re like zoo animals, born into captivity, never knowing there’s an African plain with their name on it where they could run free (and be shot by poachers for their fur).

I’ve turned into a cynic. Will electroconvulsive therapy cure my cynicism?

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I’m trying so hard to just wait this out and stay calm. I go from terror at the thought of the whole ordeal to excitement that this hell could end. Wouldn’t that be a pip? Everyone at work thinks I’m going into rehab. How insane is that? Less stigma to be a crack addict than a mental patient.

Maybe I’m a chicken for not “coming out” and going public with the electroconvulsive therapy. But it’s an embarrassment to admit you can’t control your head. I’d rather coworkers think I shoot smack than have bad brain chemistry. Is that a screwed up world or what?

I’m sure the gossip whores at work  are chattering right now, trying to decide what drug of choice Ashley uses. Is it crack, heroin? Alcohol? I’ll never tell. I hate everyone I work with anyway. They drink sweet tea of  course. Oh god, I hope this sweet tea thing doesn’t follow me to the psych hospital. Do you think the nurses will know I’m a foreigner when I say hold the sugar? Jebus, what will I do? The thought of trying to drink sweet tea in the midst of all this is too much to bear. I have to have unsugared tea or I will die.

Technorati Tags: mental patient, electroconvulsive therapy

I never finished telling who I am. I’m so afraid I won’t remember me when I’m done with this.

I don’t like walks on the beach because sand is hard to walk on. But I do like listening to the ocean and smelling its smell. I like playing in the waves.

There’s this horrible song about a loser who writes a personal ad and sings “Do you like pina coladas, and walks in the rain.” Puke.

Who the fuck likes to walk in the rain? It’s cold and slimy and you’re likely to be hit by lightning or slip on a wet spot.

I can’t speak to pina coladas because I’ve never had one. I’m not a big drinker, but I’ll have whatever Carrie Bradshaw was having. She has the life I was SUPPOSED to have. Living in New York, somehow having enough money to buy plenty of shoes, wonderful clothes, fabulous friends. She stole my life.

But I can watch it in reruns and sip my non sweet tea.

It’s obvious I have an obsession with tea. No, really it’s because I’ve been treated like crap by Georgians when I say I want non sweet tea. They really treat you shitty when you do that. They know you’re not a native, they know you’re an alien. And they know you don’t have any idea what a cotillion is unless you saw it in a movie.

I don’t have a single native friend. Only aliens like me.

So I have some friends, but it just never turns out like it does on Sex and the City. We don’t have these great regular meetings at the diner and we don’t all wear Malano Blahniks. My friends tend to fly “home” a lot to flee the southern hospitality.

Another thing about me: I’m sarcastic. I’m a native East Coaster (city unknown; god knows I could be identified if I named the city…so few of us).

I like flowers and sports, clubbing and the other normal things. I’m from a nice family and I miss them. I go home for holidays, but I miss Sunday afternoons with everyone. Maybe that caused my depression. Or maybe it’s really some chemical fuckup. I don’t know what to believe.

I’ve tried so many medications and other psychiatrists have given me other diagnoses: depression, bipolar, schizoaffective, borderline personality and just plain FUCKED UP. I think the other “diseases” were just excuses to charge my insurance more and pump me full of more meds. It was all such crazy shit and then I found this guy who said it’s just plain old depression.

He’s got the fix.

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Who am I, at least before I have the electroconvulsive therapy? I hope I’ll be the same person after, but I read things from others who have had it and some of them just aren’t the same. I have to keep trusting my doctor and just put my faith in him. I’m not religious, so it’s not like I can put my faith in Jesus or something. Maybe psychiatry will be my new religion.

I’m approaching 30 years old, unmarried, no kids. I live in Atlanta but am not a native. I’m kind of embarrassed to say I moved here to chase a boyfriend. That’s just so lame, but it’s the truth. When I get better, I’d like to get out of here. It’s too hot and I hate the fact that Georgians seem to think you’re an alien if you don’t drink sugar in your tea. They’re so into “sweet tea” that you have to specifically say “no sugar” when pulling through the drive through for an iced tea. I’m certain that in some police database, my auto license says “Must be Al Qaeda. She drinks tea with no sugar.”

I didn’t really “follow” the boyfriend. He invited me after moving here for his big corporate job. Said come on down to Georgia, the magnolias are sweet and there’s hardly a winter. He didn’t mention the sugary sweet tea they try to make you drink.

So I packed up, left my family and friends up north and headed to the home of the Braves. I hate that Tomahawk chop Braves fans do, along with their sweet tea. In fact, you might have noticed, I’m not particularly crazy (ha) about Georgia. People are a bit sugary here as well, and it seems a tad fake. Like a smile on the face and a knife to the back while you’re choking on sugary tea.

I found a job working in a mid-sized company, an administrative assistant. Somehow that seems a waste of a college education, but I’m working my way up.

The boyfriend didn’t work out. He turned out to be a prick, asked me to move here, then I found out he already had a “friend” he was cozy with. What kind of asshole says “Ooh, baby I love you and miss you. Please uproot everything, move here and we’ll continue our lives together” and has a whore on the side?

Oh, a typical man. That’s right.

I once told my psychiatrist that I really, really wanted to be a lesbian because men just suck. My lesbian friends seem so much more emotionally together, they don’t lie and cheat and they’re happier. Unfortunately, I’m not attracted to women in that way, or I’d be on the first dyke train out of town.

So here I am, approaching the proverbial 3-0, in a town I don’t especially like, my boyfriend turned out to be a cad, and I don’t really like my work all that much. Did my sucky life cause me to be depressed, or did the depression cause me to have a sucky life?

I think it’s choice 1: the chicken, also called my horrible life, came first. The depression followed, but caused my neurons to start behaving badly. That really makes no sense at all, but that’s the story. So says my psychiatrist and just about every book on mental illness you can read. (And I’ve read them all!)

I still suspect the sweet tea, but I’m an angry straight woman, so what do I know?

What I do know is I’ve been depressed for a long time and the medications haven’t done shit for me. So now it’s time to try the drastic approach. Drastic is another of the words that turn up in the media stories on the subject. Drastic, last resort, desperate.

They describe it well enough, but how about mixing up the media talk once in a while? Maybe more colorful language? Maybe something more sedate? I’m not a journalist, but I have to wonder if all those articles were written by the same person. You wade through them and it’s like being in Stepford Land, where the women dress the same, talk the same, and fawn over their husbands the same. I’m sure they all drink sweet tea out of identical Waterford glasses.

Technorati Tags: electroconvulsive therapy, my horrible life

Everything you read on the subject of electroconvulsive therapy sounds the same. Are all of the journalists who write about it on autopilot? I even watched some news clips, including 60 Minutes. The same. Just change the names, use a thesaurus to swap a few words, and the article is done. They might as well call each story “Insert Name Here” and be done with it if they aren’t going to do any real reporting.

This blog is more for me than anyone else. I’m afraid I’m going to forget things when I have the treatments and this will help me remember. Or at least it will be a record in case something bad happens. I need to rediscover my optimism about this. Right now, I’m just scared.

I called in sick to work today. I’m still trying to hold down my job but it’s not easy.

This is my blog about my journey with electroconvulsive therapy.

My name is Ashley.

After having suffered from terrible depression for a long time, nothing has worked. The meds, therapy, nothing. So I’ve decided to try electroconvulsive therapy.

I’ve read a lot of websites, lots of personal stories.

I know that memory loss is a real possibility, which is why I’ve set up this blog. A friend of mine is a techie and set it up for me, got me the domain name, and made it all very easy. Thanks to Greg for the help!

I start treatments a week from tomorrow, and will have them three times a week. Is it a bad omen that I start the day before Halloween? Trick or treat.

I’m putting my faith in my psychiatrist, who has assured me they’re safe and they’ll work. I trust him. I hope that’s not foolish, because I’ve put my trust in men before and they’ve fucked me over.

Oh, by the way, I use graphic language, so if the f word bothers you, you might want to leave now. I use it a lot.

Here’s to electricity and hoping it brings the relief I seek. I’m optimistic and almost relieved now that I’ve made my decision. I think I’ve done a thorough job in researching all the pros and cons.

Technorati Tags: electroconvulsive therapy, memory loss