Blog Series Guest Post: My Life With Depression

Author: Philip Kaplan

Bio: I am a 37 year old resident of Towson, Maryland, although I originally hail from Jersey. I spent over seven years as a lawyer for parents in custody cases initiated by Child Protective Services. I struggle with severe depression and am in treatment for it. In the past, I have served as a judge and scorer in regional high school mock trial competitions, as well as an appellate moot court judge in law school practice exercises. I am a huge fan of random acts of kindness/generosity and was fortunate enough to have gotten the chance to be one of the Kmart "layaway angels" making the rounds in recent years. More currently, I am a proud member of and volunteer for NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness). In my spare time, I enjoy power walks, pop music, twisted humor, and deep conversations.



I was 11 years old when I began having thoughts of wanting to die. I remember feeling hopeless about everything. I saw death as an escape. These feelings would only grow in intensity. But I remained just functional enough so that my parents didn't see it as a problem. My mother, with whom I otherwise had a close relationship, dismissed it as "normal teen moodiness." 





Finally, at age 15, I was taken to a therapist who quickly diagnosed me with major depression. By this time, I was practically failing 9th grade because I had no motivation for school. After almost throwing myself out of a 23 story window, I was hospitalized. Over the next few years, my life would consist of endless medication trials, therapy, outpatient programs, a transfer to an alternative high school, and some really, really bad times. Mood wise, I experienced chronic unhappiness, punctuated by acute feelings of frightening despair.  

At 19, right after my freshman year at college, I was hospitalized again, and a decision was made to discontinue all the medication I had been taking. None of it had seemed to help. Miraculously, the discontinuation of my meds resulted in my depression ending in a matter of months. Over that summer, all the darkness seemed to lift, and my mood began to improve dramatically. I felt like I had been unchained and benevolently freed from some deep pit. I began experiencing a sense of confidence and optimism that had eluded me throughout my entire adolescence. I returned to college in the fall, pronouncing myself depression-free and terminating all therapy.

At this point, I was a motivated student-- an intellectually curious philosophy major-- and was doing well in my classes. Intent on proving myself, I put all my focus on school and outward achievement. I graduated from college with multiple honors and headed off to law school. Everyone was proud of me. I was proud of myself. How far I'd come. I told myself I was on my way up in the world.

But all was not well. I was 22 and had never even been on a date with a girl. My teenage depression and resulting social isolation had made attempting to date unthinkable. And even in college, I had put dating on the back burner, instead choosing to focus on academic/career goals. Not to mention that I was a commuter student who had lived at home and had never become very involved in the campus scene. 

Now I was in my early 20s, about to start law school in a new city, having moved away from home for the first time. I felt my dating inexperience, and I hated it. 

I don't believe I was clinically depressed during my 20s. But I was not happy, either. In between managing the stressors of being a law student, I was struggling to date. At 25, I started dating the woman who would become my first girlfriend, and I would stay with her until I was 32. We would be together throughout my next batch of major life stressors: the bar exam, job hunting, moving to another new city (with my girlfriend, who also got a job there), and beginning work as an attorney. In many ways, we were good together. In other ways, we were not right for each other at all, and on some level, I think we always knew that. 

We broke up, and now I was struggling to date again. I was also dealing with some serious job dissatisfaction. Still, I would not call myself depressed.

Yet.

Around age 34, my general unhappiness began crossing that line. It was a line I was familiar with. The line-- sometimes clear and sometimes blurred-- that separates unhappiness from clinical depression. I felt like I could no longer hold it together and pretend that everything was more or less fine. I had trouble getting through the work day. My friends became worried because I'd start talking about hating my life and wishing I were dead. I was battling those same feelings of hopelessness and despair that haunted me as a teenager.

That was three years ago. I am 37 now, and unfortunately, I have had to accept the fact that I am dealing with a recurrence of depression. I have a great therapist, great friends, and supportive family. And yet there are still so many unresolved problems, so many questions I can't answer. The best I can do is keep moving forward, not being ashamed of my struggles, and continue to fight off those darker moods when they come.