EPTOver several months, I lost everything.
It was a massive snowball downwards. Nothing made sense anymore. Time blurred by, it's already been 3 months and back to work. Grades dropped; I have no chance to make back into the top 10% of the class. Exercise dropped; it's cold, and it's too physically and mentally draining against my schoolwork. Motivation dropped;I just don't see a point. Reflection increased. Interactions with people dropped. Loneliness increased. Hundredfold.
What do you look forward to when you're depressed? What do you see in your future that makes you cling on to hope?
In short, nothing.
It was never a constant in my mind. I did not spend days and weeks brooding over my existence, staring at the void. I'm not like that. I love the disconnect.
My life is centered around the disconnect. That feeling of immersing yourself into your computer. Forgetting about all your worries, about all your concerns. Focusing simply on your digital self; guiding your character throughout a game, finishing up on coding projects, losing myself in a sea of videos. An easy way to spend days, months; an escape from reality.
When you leave the disconnect, suddenly, you're bombarded with all the crap you have been avoiding. The homework assignments you don't know how to do. The classes you're doing poorly in. The lack of friends you have. The breakdown of your social skills. The empty void in your life left by your ex. The belief that you might never find someone that you can interact with like you did with your ex.
That's how far the down-swings go. The up-swings? Nearly non-existent.
Sometimes, when I'm walking home at night, I will stare up at the sky, and forget about everything. There's something about the stars that just makes you feel small, that makes your problems feel small, and that melts away all your worries.
Or maybe you will look at the morning sky and it'll seem so peaceful that your mind eases up. You can finally smile a bit. You can hum a tune in your head and seem to bob along, because your worries disappeared. But that feeling disappears as fast as it came.
In fact, I think the real effect of depression is really how little good things actually affect you. Someone will be exceptionally nice to you for no reason and you feel good, but in an hour, it's like it never happened. You can exist in some ethereal happiness, but after a couple minutes, you forget why you were happy.
And well really, that's the definition of depression. In times where you're not really feeling anything, when your mood should be neutral, you somehow still feel down. There could be a heavy burden over your head while you're just sitting there, but even if you don't notice it, you feel down. It's unexplainable.
Interacting with people and trying to make friends all becomes a hassle. I'm now acutely aware of all the nuances of the conversation, how the person is reacting, how engaged the person is in the conversation, how well am I engaging them. And I just can't do it.
When everything seems to turn up short; you offending the person you're talking to, you re-analyze what you said because suddenly they stopped messaging you, then slowly it begins to dawn on you that maybe it's all in vain. Maybe you just can't do it anymore. And it's too much of a pain to constantly re-think about all the ways you screwed up, because trust me, there are a lot of ways you screwed up.
The worst feeling is being ignored. When you message friends that said they were your friends, maybe they respond in an hour. Maybe they respond in a day. Sometimes, they don't respond at all. When you message a girl you have a crush on and there's no response, it's extremely disheartening and immediately obvious it's pointless, but that's one of the few things I'm still clinging on to.
Sometimes their response isn't what you want, or sometimes the conversation just feels wrong, like they don't understand, or they're belittling you, even though you know that they're not.
And the effect is compounded by the feeling that everything is against you. Facebook chat usually marks messages as Read to you when they're Read by the person you sent it to. When you send someone something, and it hasn't been responded to, you check if they're read it. But it clearly says it hasn't been read. But that person has been posting to Facebook for the last few days. So they just ignored that giant red flag in the top corner? Or maybe they're just ignoring you because you're not worth it anymore.
It's a serious display of a lack of self-confidence. A lack of motivation, and an urge to evoke self-pity in everyone you meet. A real desire to not only exist, but have your existence noticed, and in a way, verified.
So what do I look ahead to? When I'm staring at the very rock bottom, I think about all the things that make me, myself. I try to come to terms with that idea that I am who I am. I can change only so much about my personality.
I have to try to accept that everything I have done, everything that I've accomplished, that I've learned, that I know are intrinsically a part of me. That I am an image of exactly everything that I've become and will become. That when I sit down and give up, then I am going to remember that in 5 years from now, or 20 years from now, I chose this moment to say, I give up, because I am the person that gives up. You tell yourself, in front of everyone, that you're not giving up no matter what.
So I push myself onwards. I will always be the tryhard; I get satisfaction from doing well, learning, and pushing myself. That is who I am. Not the smartest, but I can definitely be among the best if I feel the motivation there. And I feed off of that. I know I probably can't beat the top 5% of my class in academics. But I know if I tried my best, I could do nearly just as good, and have stuff in the side to boot.
I know I'm definitely not the best programmer in my class, in my program, or in my university. But dammit, I've only been programming for a year, so at my current pace, I can't imagine how much I could improve by, and I can definitely see myself as better than a lot of people that I thought were good programmers. Give me the time, and I can and will prove it.
I know I'm definitely not the hardest working, but dammit, I enjoy my free time as well. I like relaxing with a game or stream of Starcraft. I like improving my writing, learning the guitar, reading up on the latest tech. and games. And I like balancing that with high academics. And I like caring about my education, because if you're going to go to class to interfere with my hard earned tuition, fuck you.
I know I'm not the best looking guy out there, but at least I care about the way I handle myself. I'll dress nicely so I can feel better about myself. I'll make the effort to smile at people who are nice to me if I don't blank out. I'll make the effort to say thank you and smile as much as possible whenever the opportunity arrives. I'll make the effort to hold the door open, for guys and girls. Because I appreciate it when people do that for me.
And all of these things that make me, me, are things that I'm proud of, and happy about. I have flaws, I have weaknesses. But I'm not going to let those drag me down.
While I am still a huge wreck, I choose to make a stand because that's the whole point, isn't it. When you're dragged through mud, you scream, you shout, you curse. And then you pick yourself up, and move on. And that's what matters. I have a very pessimistic view of the world. But I am still hopelessly optimistic. Always hopelessly wishing that just over the horizon, things will be better.
And that's the point of it all, isn't it? To one day surround yourself with happiness. To see as much of the good and happiness around you, the laughter of a child, maybe your child, the beauty of a young couple together. To finally be at peace with who you are, what you've become, what you've accomplished, and what your life has meant.
And God help anyone who gets in my way of that.
