|
I wrote this the other day and shared it on my Facebook page because I realized that depression is a really common, really dangerous, and really misunderstood illness. Since I'm relapsing, I figured I'm in a decent position to say something about it. So many people I know have had it, and I've heard of so many people committing suicide because of it. With that in mind, I figured I might as well use this awful state of affairs that I'm presently in to actually do something productive. I set all the privacy settings to "public" for the note on Facebook, so I'm not worried about any personal information getting out on here, either. I'm not the spokesperson for all depressed people, but I can share my experiences so that people who aren't depressed might know what to do when they meet someone who is.
If you'd like to read the post with better formatting/share it on Facebook, please go here.
Everything I write here is completely, 100% honest. This is a really long post, but there are instructions on how to read it in the first heading.
This is dedicated to everyone who has ever wanted to die, and yet lived, everyone who died because they could no longer see, every parent who lost a child, every photograph of the unbroken whole that is now just a memory, and to every infant still asleep.
But, most of all, this is dedicated to love. If nothing I write survives but this, then that's enough, because this is the only thing I can give right now. It's nothing special, but it's all I am and all I love. If it helps even one sad soul, then I will smile, regardless of what happens to me.
Besides, did they not say that one must love?  (I wonder if anyone will get that joke).
-michael kirley~
Contents
Notes on the structure: this is a long post. And it's probably going to get longer in the future if I find something to be lacking or if someone makes a good comment that I want to integrate. However, here is what you should read depending on your time (referring to the underlined headings):
If you want to know some basic practical "do's and dont's" for interacting with depressed individuals, read:
What is Clinical Depression?
“That’s not depression!”
Depression is not a choice.
If you only want to know what depression feels like, or if you're curious about how depression has affected my mind (in detail) or if you're worried about how my depression is right now, read:
So What Does it Feels Like, Then?
What it “Feels Like” for Me
If you know me well, or if you are seriously concerned about depression/suicide/mental disorders in general, please read the whole thing. If you have any concerns or questions, please ask me either in a message or by leaving a comment (depending on the sensitivity of the question) but please first check in the "Notes" section at the end of this post to see if your question is already addressed.
Introduction
Hi everyone. Clinical depression (“depression,” hereafter) is a psychiatric condition which has affected the lives of many people. In fact, you almost certainly know several people who have either already experienced major depressive episodes or will experience such an episode during their lifetime. In light of the prevalence of the condition, I thought it was a good idea to do what I can in helping people who don’t have depression (and, hopefully, never will) to understand exactly what makes the illness so terrifying, both for those who have it and for those whose loved ones have it.
This explanation will be an informal combination of basic, objective facts about the illness (i.e. scientific knowledge) and my own subjective understanding of what having depression actually feels like. Essentially, I want to be able to give people some impression of what it’s really like to have depression, because that’s what’s most useful in supporting people afflicted with the disorder. It’s not really possible to do this in a convincing way without some brief words about the medical conception of the disease, since I’ve found that failing to include certain scientific facts in such explanations tends to result in misunderstandings and/or disbelief.
With that in mind, please bear with me. If you have any questions at all, feel free to ask. I’m going to keep the scientific appeals to a minimum, since they’re rather useless to people who don’t have medical training, and since they can all be accessed easily from Wikipedia or WebMD. The point of this article, remember, is to help you understand what having clinical depression actually means for the person who has it, since I believe that empathy is the foundation of all successful moral support.
What is Clinical Depression?
It’s impossible to explain a condition if one doesn’t have a good understanding of what that condition is to start with. That said, it turns out that defining clinical depression is really hard. It’s so hard, in fact, that even psychiatrists have criticized past and present definitions (from the DSM) as being, to some extent, incomplete, in that they don’t paint a full picture of the different causes/symptoms of the disorder itself. Now, this does not mean that depression is a made up illness; if you take away nothing else from this post, remember that. No, what the imperfection of the definition means is that depression is really, really complicated. It’s complicated because it affects the mind in a very broad way, and because it can often be hard for external observers (even trained ones) to distinguish between normal fluctuations in mood and the disorder itself.
The best informal definition that I’ve found, so far, is the one from the Wikipedia article on major depressive disorder; it states that MDD “is a mental disorder characterized by episodes of all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem and loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities.” Okay, well that doesn’t seem so bad, does it? That’s because even though this definition is true, it’s very, very broad, and is subject to a sliding scale. The truth is that this definition is good (in my opinion) because it implicitly accounts for the sheer variety of depressive episodes. Bluntly, there is no “textbook depression” case. There isn’t. Realizing this fact is the first step in understanding the illness more dynamically.
So, then, what are the things we can say somewhat definitively about the disorder? Well, it’s clearly true that depression is a state of seriously low mood; that’s certainly true. It’s also very important to note that this low mood is “all-encompassing.” That means that the low mood isn’t just some feeling like a mood swing, but that it permeates and touches every single part of a person’s identity, perspective, and even their will. There are a lot of scientific hypotheses about what the physical basis for depression is, though there is little specificity in these theories; what we do know is that depression is often associated with fluctuations in the levels of neurotransmitters in the brain. This is why many antidepressant medications are designed to affect the quantity or recycling of certain neurotransmitters. That said, it’s clear that there’s a lot more to clinical depression than that it has to do with neurotransmitters, in the same sense that there’s a lot more to cancer than that it has to do with cells.
“That’s not depression!”
Many people, whether they’ve experienced depression or not, seem to have some idealized conception of what the illness actually is. Those who have experienced depression themselves may have a tendency to think depression only occurs in the way they experienced it (I am guilty of this). Those who haven’t had depression often imagine it as some grandiose crisis brought on by losing a spouse or being bullied throughout high school. The problem with both of these points of view is that they are far too narrow. Yes, depression can be associated with a really traumatizing event in one’s life, but it doesn’t have to be, and the traumatic nature of a trigger event may not be evident to people other than the victim of despair. The truth is that depression is a very unique, very insidious illness. It affects many different personality types, irrespective of culture.
I have often noticed a tendency for people to dismiss or downplay a given instance of depression by pointing out some perceived lack: “How could he be depressed? It’s not like he doesn’t have friends and a good family!” or “I’m sure she’ll be fine; everyone gets a bit down sometimes. She’s just being dramatic for attention,” for example. I’m going to be very clear, and I’m going to put this on its own line so that people absorb it:
You do not get to decide when someone is depressed. You do not get to decide whether someone’s life is “bad enough” to be depressed, or how long they should take to recover, or that they’re exaggerating.
Read that five times until you’re sure you understand what I’m saying and what I’m not saying. I’m not saying that every person who laments having a bad day should be treated as having a clinical disorder. I’m not saying that there aren’t people who fake mental illnesses for attention. But I am saying that you should generally be erring on the side of caution. Think of it this way: if someone is really just being melodramatic, and you take them seriously, what happens? Maybe you waste a bit of your pity and have your ego dented a little. You’ll get over it. But what happens if you dismiss someone’s depression as being pathetic and a couple of months later they wind up in the hospital, or worse, dead? Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s not your fault if either of these things happen. It isn’t. No matter how terrible your reaction is, unless you’re in a position of authority or are someone the victim takes very seriously, you are not responsible for what a depressed person does out of the result of his/her depression.
At the same time, though, we don’t just not want to be responsible for people we care about doing bad things; we want to help them do good things. With that in mind, we don’t want to give them terrible advice, even if their possible suicide wouldn’t be our fault. We want the best for them, because we love them, or else we wouldn’t be entertaining their problems to start with. But how do we know what things are helpful and what things aren’t? Truthfully, it’s difficult to say without context, but there are some general things we can deduce just by thinking a little bit more about the illness itself.
Depression is not a choice.
This realization is the foundation of any successful support or treatment for a depressed person. No person wants to feel awful all the time. Take my word for it: it’s terrible. But we’ll get to that later. The point here is that depression isn’t solely the product of some decision to just give up and feel awful. Read that really carefully, though, because I’m not saying that choices have nothing to do with depression, nor that depression can’t be improved by positive choices on the part of the victim. What I’m saying is simply that, even though depression is invisible to observers, you need to start treating it as if it were a huge tumour on the victim’s forehead.
Let’s walk with that thought experiment a bit. If someone has a large, unsightly, and painful tumour on their forehead, it seems rather absurd to tell that person to simply decide not to have it. But hang on; maybe it’s the case that there are some things this person can do that will help them recover from the tumour, like physical exercise and proper nutrition. Okay, well those are choices. And, possibly, those choices alone will be enough to totally eliminate the tumour. But that doesn’t mean getting rid of the tumour is a choice. It means that choices affect, but do not directly cause, the tumour. So, too, with depression.
The best way to explain why depression isn’t a choice is to consider a few pretty obvious examples of cases in which is definitely isn’t. We can deride depressed teenagers as being weak babies all we like, but how does that line of reasoning apply to, say, a woman experiencing post-partum depression? How about someone with bipolar disorder (not technically MDD, but still)? In many cases of post-partum depression, women have ostensibly no reason to be upset! In fact, they have a lot of reasons to be very happy, in the minds of everyone around them. They just bore a brand new, completely healthy child, whom they already feel great affection for. So why do they feel so awful? Does it have something to do with choice? Certainly; it is possible for some women to mitigate the effects of their depression (or be cured entirely) by focusing on the beauty of their child, family, and spouse. And it’s equally true that PPD can be exacerbated by circumstances like the infant’s poor health, or uncertainty about one’s financial situation. But these things are possible correlations with PPD. They do not define the disorder, they are not essential for the disorder to manifest, and treating these things is not some blanket cure-all for PPD.
This isn’t just my opinion, either. There are many, many women who have suffered from PPD and who really tried their best to look at their situations positively, to no avail. Only after time, treatment, and perhaps even medication, were these women able to recover. And you know what? That’s just fine. They are no less successful or intelligent or capable than anyone else. Nor are they of weaker character than other women who, perhaps, did not require medication. And that’s because no two instances of depression are identical.
This, I think, is key to really coming to terms with depression not being a matter of choice or perspective, or whatever, because it forces one to acknowledge that just because some technique worked for some depressed person, that doesn’t mean that it will work for everyone, or that someone who finds it ineffective isn’t trying hard enough. You might wonder: if choice affects depression, but the same thoughts and beliefs don’t seem to universally help all people suffering from it, then how can we make sense of that?
Depression is Irrational
…But it doesn’t necessarily feel like it is. Sometimes, depressed people feel like they are sad for a completely coherent and logical reason, and will automatically tune out any voices who tell them to look at some aspect or another of their life as counter-evidence, because they already believe that the person talking to them just doesn’t understand why they feel hopeless. At the end of the day, though, the reason that choice, optimism, and positive thinking don’t always work (or can’t singlehandedly fix) for all cases of depression is that, on some level, depression doesn’t really make any sense. But it doesn’t make any sense in a way that is often nearly impossible for someone suffering from the illness to realize, even over a long period of time (overcoming depression by tonight after getting it this morning just doesn’t happen, and it’s unrealistic to expect that it does).
What this irrationality actually comes from is down to the operation of the illness itself. HIV attacks the immune system; conjunctivitis attacks the eyes; and cancer invades the space of other cells. But what does depression attack? The mood? No. Depression attacks you. It doesn’t attack your mind, or your feelings, or your memories, or anything like that, in particular. It attacks every single piece of your identity; every memory, every joy, every sorrow, every hope, every dream, every failure, every secret, and everything you will ever be.
Why don’t they just get over it?
If it’s not yet clear how this affects choices and changes in perspective, think of it this way:
Imagine you wake up tomorrow and the cloudless, bright sky is, for some reason, utterly black. At first, you’re confused. You wonder if you’re dreaming, or if something has happened. You think back and try to remember if you ingested any hallucinogenic drugs. You find someone you trust and ask them what’s going on. They tell you that the sky is blue, like always, and that you’ve been duped by some weird neurochemical imbalance which alters your visual perception of the sky. They tell you that the sky looks black because, and only because, you think it’s black, and that once you believe it’s not black, it’ll be blue again. So you try, and you fail. Then your friend tells you a whole bunch of scientific stuff about how the sky couldn’t possibly be black, and you try again and fail even more quickly.
You do this for a month. Finally, your friend has had enough: “What’s wrong with you? Obviously you don’t want to get better; either that or you’re just being weak. Don’t you care at all about how much this is making all of us worry about you? Stop being so inconsiderate and just get over it.” You don’t even bother to try this time; in fact, the sky gets a little bit darker as you walk home. In a way, you think, your friend is right. You can’t see the sky as blue, no matter how hard you try, and since it seems incredibly self-evident to your friends and family, then clearly there is some defect in the way you’re approaching the problem. Whether it’s weakness or selfishness or arrogance or anything doesn’t really matter to you. What matters is that there is something wrong with you, and that your best wasn’t good enough. You really tried, you think, and you really want to believe that the sky is blue; blue is your favourite colour, even. Why would you want the sky to be black? But when you look up, it’s black on black and black again. Can’t argue with that.
The point of this little story is to illustrate that, when a depressed person fails to spontaneously recover or improve as a result of some seemingly easy suggested cure, there is a tendency for people to assume that the depressed person is doing something wrong with the provided method, because if you had used that method, you wouldn’t have felt bad anymore. But the flaw here is in thinking that you (or anyone) know in an intimate way what the depressed person is feeling. You don’t. You can’t, really, any more than you can know what it’s like to grow up in the Middle East, no matter how many documentaries you watch on the subject.
But even though you can never restart your life as if you grew up the Middle East, you can do a lot better than the person who, when they see women being stoned to death for adultery, wonders why the burqa-wearing women don’t just go the courts, or vote in a new leader, or move to a different country, or convert to a different religion. That’s really what this post is ultimately about: you might never know what it feels like to actually have clinical depression, but you can do a lot better than the person who doesn’t know anything. And if you want to support your loved ones, then that’s probably what you want to do.
So What Does it Feels Like, Then?
The short answer is that it is the single worst conscious state of mind that anyone who has experienced it can think of. This isn’t to demean people with other mental disorders, or people with other illnesses in general. No, what I’m saying is that, for the depressed person, there is no conceivable pain that is worse than the one they are experiencing; they could not possibly have a lower level of hope or interest than they currently do, because, right now, their levels are zero. Nobody with depression sits backs and think to themselves “Well, at least it’s not as bad as _________.” That’s not to say that they wouldn’t actually feel worse if something else did happen, but right now, they are in the worst state they have ever been in, as far as they’re concerned.
Now, I don’t speak for all people who have been depressed. There are people who have had far more difficult circumstances than I have who have come out strong, and people with comparatively easy circumstances that have never recovered. But I do speak for all people who have been depressed when I say that no person, no matter how good or bad you evaluate their circumstances to be, is “better” than some other person simply because they overcame what you perceive to be larger obstacles. Hell, it’s not even that some people are “stronger” than others in dealing with depression, because they aren’t fighting the same thing, and because the circumstances you might feel are relevant to depression could scarcely matter to the person in question.
When someone is living below the poverty line in Canada, does it really make any sense to say that they’re just being pathetic, and that they should think of the children starving in Africa? No. It’s not a competition. A person who grows up starving in Africa is a different person than the one who grows up below the poverty line in Canada. In one sense, the starving African child is “worse-off” compared to the Canadian, but if we compare the African relative to other Africans and the Canadian relative to other Canadians, both of them are in pretty dire straits. And this is absolutely relevant, because people are the products of their environment. No person who grew up in Canada can wonder what it would be like to grow up as a starving African child; in fact, they shouldn’t be asked to do so in order to legitimize their own difficulty.
What it “Feels Like” for Me
I want to emphasize again that I don’t speak for all people who have experienced depression, or anxiety, or any other mental disorder. I don’t speak for all Canadians, all young adults, all men, or all Caucasians. I speak for myself, and hopefully enough of what I say is applicable to other people that it will be useful in helping you understand what people who are depressed really feel like. For the first time, I’m going to tell someone what it really feels like, in full. And I guess the first time sharing the feeling itself should be with everyone.
I first acknowledged that I was depressed on October 14th, 2008; I was 17. At the time, I didn’t really know what depression was, but I did know that I felt weirdly terrible, and that something inside me had broken to the effect that I no longer really believed in, well, happiness. For roughly a year, I experienced ups and down in this generally depressed state. I retreated from everything, including school, my friends, and my family. I started to opt out of things I normally would have done (I quit taking piano lessons, for instance) because I couldn’t cope with the anxiety and instability of my mood. Of course, this made things worse, since anxiety is like a drug addiction; the more you give in, the harder it is to win.
In the Fall of 2009, I went off to the University of Toronto to begin my first year. Even though I was depressed, I made a go of it, because I was Michael Kirley, and because Michael Kirley is some sort of prodigy; how could he even consider quitting? I lasted three days before I had to come home. That September was one of the worst months of my life. I deteriorated from day to day, and even though I had been seeing a counselor for months, I felt worse and worse, and I couldn’t even imagine feeling better. In a way, I didn’t want to be better. I was feeling depressed for a good reason, to my mind at the time: my life was uninteresting, things were happening that I did not like and could not control, and the general “path” I was expected to take did not interest me at all. The trouble was that I had no alternative ideas. I didn’t want to do what normal 17/18-year-olds did (whatever I thought that was) but I didn’t have any solution to my problem. After a while, I began to believe that there was no solution: the world was simply incompatible with me.
At this point, my realization about the world (which had gradually formed over the year) came up against the strongest part of my 18 year-old self: my ego. If the world was incompatible with me, then I should just change somehow, right? Wrong. That was anathema to me at 18. Michael Kirley was concentrated intellect, ambition, and pride. That is the image of myself I crafted during the last two years of high school. So what happens when it was the might of the entire world versus the invincible, indomitable ego of Michael Kirley?
The same thing that always happens: the world wins. Michael Kirley died on October 2nd, 2009, and the world woke up on October 3rd without a care at all. But, in a stroke of luck, a piece of Michael Kirley lived, and, on October 3rd, all of the problems were gone. The world was bright and smiling, the future was hopeful, and life was fun again. What followed was a very optimistic autumn, winter, and spring. The summer was stressful, but because of actual events, not because of some illness or another (at this time I didn’t think my anxiety was abnormal).
In the Fall of 2010, I went to university for real, and I actually did fairly well, all things considered. I had a lot of anxiety issues, I missed a lot of class, particularly after Christmas (shout out to Korini) and I did rather less well than I could have, but I completed all my courses, had a high GPA, and had overcome the significant external anxiety issue at the same time. Things were actually looking very good for me, in a lot of ways. I felt very liberated. I went to school in the Fall of 2011 and, for the first three months, things went very well. And then it all just fell apart. In the second semester, I had to drop a lot of courses, since I couldn’t handle the stress, and because my anxiety was reaching frighteningly large peaks.
With a bit of luck, I completed my courses that year and came back home for the summer. It was now evident that there were some problems, though it wasn’t really clear what they were. At the time, my counselor and I believed it was something to do with a lack of energy and focus, so I got a referral to a psychiatrist. But that was all the way in September, one week before school. I started the summer off going to my family doctor and trying out different ADHD meds to help with my focus, but none of them seemed to have any positive effect on me. But by the time August came around, I had far worse problems. I was so anxious all the time that I couldn’t do anything at all (not even hang out with my friends). So when I went to see my psychiatrist in September (2012) I had already decided to take the first semester off. She agreed, and it was the best decision I made in a long time.
It took a long time for my anxiety to vanish, but I was well enough by January to take at least a couple of classes for the sake of exposure. Things were going really well, in a lot of ways. There were anxiety issues, yes, but they weren’t fatal ones, and I could control them with thinking rather than with more medication. So I finished those two classes with a GPA that easily exceeded 4.0. Things were looking rather good! I had some emotional issues in the spring, but they were pretty minor. I was still seeing my psychiatrist to deal with more immediate concerns of energy and motivation, but that was an issue that didn’t hurt all the time, so I more or less was able to relax a bit. The summer was actually quite lovely in a lot of ways, at least at the beginning. But by the time I got into June, something inside me was off. I was starting to feel that strange itch and moodiness and anxiety and single-mindedness that precedes depression. I didn’t really know what it was at the time; it had been so long since I was depressed!
I visited my psychiatrist once more during June, and received a medication that actually improved my motivation and energy levels a lot. I almost forgot about my anxiety, my worrying, and my mood swings for a few days. A third of the way into July, I underwent some emotional upheaval for a very common and typical reason. So I, naturally, became very sad, as is normal for people who encounter such situations. But, again, something broke during the sadness. It wasn’t the event itself, no, but whatever piece of Michael Kirley had survived October 2nd and recreated itself for October 3rd was no longer sufficient to control the depression. I must give it credit: it lasted a very long time, that idea which kept me going. October 2009 to July 2013 isn’t so terrible, is it?
Anyhow, the best way I can describe this cycle is to imagine a tsunami approaching a city. The city was designed with some walls and with reasonably sturdy buildings, but when the tsunami first hits, a lot of people are killed, and many houses are washed away. The survivors reconstruct the city, and this time they build a wall designed to protect them from tsunamis. And, for a time, they live somewhat comfortably, albeit unhappily (the walls block the sunlight a little) as tsunamis bounce harmlessly off their walls. But, eventually, an uncharacteristically ferocious summer storm approaches, and the walls are overcome. But once the walls are overcome, they collapse in on themselves, and crush the wall-builders of the city. In this way, the tsunami itself doesn’t really do more damage than the first tsunami did, but it is enough to annihilate the foundations which have guarded the city for a time.
And that brings us to today. So, after all this, how does it feel? It’s strange that I’ve written so many paragraphs but still not really said how it feels.
I could tell you all sorts of things about how it feels. I could tell you about how I’ve cried for days straight, how I’ve cried at two in the morning, how I’ve cried in the middle of a grocery store, and how I’ve cried kissing my mother goodnight. I could tell you how I’ve been so angry at myself, so angry at the past, so angry at the world, so angry at you. I could tell you how I retreated into myself and created a poor imitation of the ego that died all the way back in 2009. But the imitation was cheap and cynical; sometimes I would feel happy, if only for a moment, if I just allowed myself to hate everything and everyone (except, of course, my family). But it never lasts, and it’s sipping poison, for after the hatred subsides, regret takes its place. Shameful to think such terrible things about other people.
Maybe I could tell you all the things I’ve said, to my mom, to myself, to God, to anyone who would listen, and even to whomever I used to be. I could tell you how it is to feel so much pain and confusion that even going to sleep at five in the afternoon seems like a good idea. I could tell you what it’s like to believe something is good and yet still have it cut you in half. I can tell you what it’s like to have people cry because of you, to have people hate you because of your emptiness, to know people lie when they say they’ll see you the same way as before. I can tell you how it felt when I saw a picture of me at four years old, with a cut on my cheek, holding my newborn brother, and how I realized that naïve, four-year-old me would be ashamed of who I am now. I can tell you what it feels like to go through old photographs and letters and trophies and report cards and journals, each so full of hope and expectation, and know that it was all tears and broken glass.
Maybe I could tell you that, if I traveled back to October 2nd, 2009, and heard Michael Kirley’s cries as his 18-year-old identity disintegrated; if I listened as he begged the darkness: “Will I be happy?”; if, instead of silence, he heard my voice, that he so desperately wished he could hear, I would break my dearest rule and lie: “Yes, it’s true. Believe it, always.”
But even if I told you all of that, even if I told you about the most painful seconds of my life, when broken knives were digging trenches through my heart and through my eyes, I would still not have told you the worst of depression. Before I was ever depressed, I imagined that people who were depressed were essentially extremely sad, or upset, or angry, and that they needed to get past whatever grief was causing their anguish. I thought that self-harm and suicide were for the weakest cowards, that drug addiction was idiotic, and that hiding one’s pain was absurd. But all of that is just details. Everything is details. You want to know the secret? The worst part of depression?
Okay. Here’s the secret:
Depression doesn’t feel like anything. No, I don’t mean that there isn’t anything that feels like depression. I mean that depression, the cruelest part of it, feels like nothing. It’s not sadness, it’s not anger, it’s not pain; it’s not even cynicism. It’s just me sitting alone at a little wooden table in the middle of a courtyard on a gray day. There are no birds, no people, and no trees. There is no food. My coffee is lukewarm. And no matter which way I look, no matter how hard I strain my eyes, there are no sunbeams or stars; there are no flashes of lightning. There is just me, the rain, and silence. And every horizon is the same courtyard stretching on eternally; there are no other tables.
I don’t know if anyone will understand that paragraph, because it is absurd, but that’s really how I feel. In a way, it sounds peaceful, doesn’t it? It is. I used to think that the people who commit suicide do so in a fit of despair or anger. And I still think that’s true, sometimes. But for me, the worst moments have never been like that. I can grow from pain and I can temper anger, but I cannot process nothingness, when every moment is a second and a day and a year at once, all bumping into each other with nothing to distinguish them.
The sad truth of it all is that when I’m despairing beyond reason, or furious, or hopeless, it’s awful, but I know that it’s awful. When I lose all feeling completely, when every colour turns to ash and light and dark lose distinction, that’s when I’m really afraid. I’m afraid because that’s when the depression comes floating out to my courtyard, sits down in front of me at some conjured chair, and looks at me. I look at him. He tells me he’s me, but from tomorrow. He tells me he loves me. He tells me he wants me to be happy. He even tells me he’d die himself if it meant I could smile in the rain. You see, he’s no monster. It’s only when it’s dark or bright, when I can’t really see him, when all I feel are lanced lungs and shattered teeth, that I know he’s evil.
Is he, though? When he sits there in the courtyard, with his empty cup and his curly hair, he’s just a kid like me. When he tells me that he’s sorry that he never did what we had always planned to do; when he tells me all the dreams were fantasies; when he begs for my forgiveness for never catching any stardust; when he tells me “It gets better,” but cries when I ask if he’s lying; how can I kill him then? He’s just the little child in me, stuffed inside some awkward body, and thrust into a future that burns him just to see. He fought, he says. He tells me all the stories, about the battles and the triumphs, but every tale ends with a sorrow: a shattered hope and some new epiphany. And it seems that with each passing memory, his voice drops a little lower; the refashioned dreams birthed out of sorrow seem to grow more mortal with each incarnation. And finally he tells me he’s sorry. Just “sorry.”
I think I know the answer, but I ask him anyway: “Why?” He doesn’t speak for a while, but he doesn’t look away, either. I’m not sure if he’s still crying; we’re both soaked now. Then: “They’re all gone. There’s nothing left.” Confused, I look at him strangely. After a moment, he continues. “There are no more dreams. I gave them all away. When I sleep, I’m dead till I wake; I cannot dream. I gave it everything I had, and it took them all. I even gave it my love for Matem, with her perfect heart and happy eyes. I…she was the last dream I had, but the strongest. It killed every single one, and laughed as it butchered my Matem.”
It dawns on me, and I cry for reasons I don’t understand. I sob with such fury that my eyes blur completely. I raise my hand to my face and rub the tears away.
I look up. He is gone. I am sitting at the table, but the coffee cup is across from me, on the other side. I look higher still. He looks so different, and yet the same. His hair is longer, and he’s shorter. His eyes look brighter even though they’re flecked with worry. I don’t understand. What happened? Before I can say anything, he speaks, in his light little voice.
“Who are you?” I ignore his question. He is persistent: “You’re me, aren’t you?” I nod carefully, but I am uncertain. But then it strikes me. I must know: “What is the date today?” He looks at me oddly, as if I’ve asked some ridiculous nonsense. “It’s October the 2nd.” I blink. “2009,” he adds. I blink twice.
It is difficult not to cry, but I do my best. I force a smile, and look at his sweet little face. “Don’t worry, little one. It gets better. Remember it, always.” He looks stunned. Yes, I did it. It’s done now. I passed the test. I close my eyes in relief.
“Are you lying?” My heart explodes and mind is split in two. I open my eyes and see the little boy through tears and rain. I blink.
The boy is gone. The coffee cup is in front of me again. I look at the sky, and it’s gray to infinity. It is August 3, 2013, and I do not know what happens next.
Now you know.
Notes
- Matem is the name I use to address my mother.
- This is not directed at anyone in particular. Every hypothetical conversation I have constructed is based on multiple similar conversations from my own life. If you happen to have said something similar to me (or someone else) it doesn’t mean I’m singling you out; it means your words were either really good or really common.
- Everything I have written about myself is completely honest. Nothing has been fabricated or embellished for the sake of attention, or whatever else. If you are skeptical of my history, send me a message and we can talk about it in more detail; I'm sure I can clear up any misunderstandings.
- If you know someone who says they are depressed and whom you believe is seriously contemplating suicide/self-harm, contact their family, guardian, and/or emergency medical services immediately. Do not, under any circumstances, belittle whatever issues this person is having. If you do not think you are equipped to help them, say so in a respectful way, and point them in the direction of someone who knows better; alternatively, tell them you are willing to listen, but that you don't know how to help them. If someone is contemplating suicide, take it seriously.
- If you say nothing else, tell the people you love that you love them. It won't cure them (at least not immediately) but it will give them something to think about, and that's another moment gained, in the grand scheme of the illness.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a medical professional. The above is intended only as supplementary advice, and is not intended to cure or treat any illness. If you are experiencing symptoms consistent with depression, seek medical attention immediately. If you are feeling suicidal, call one of the numerous suicide hotlines. If you are too emotional to do this, you should feel free to message me. I will talk to you as soon as I am able to, about anything you want. I promise you that. I'm not trained, and I'm not a doctor/psychiatrist, but I will listen to you if you're not ready to talk to someone on the phone.
 
|
"I can grow from pain and I can temper anger, but I cannot process nothingness, when every moment is a second and a day and a year at once, all bumping into each other with nothing to distinguish them."
That's a really sick sentence. Poetic even. Damn. Thanks for writing it, it was a pleasure to read.
I really like the Stephen Fry quote:
“If you know someone who’s depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn't a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather."
|
Great read. I can certainly relate to that, even though I haven't had clinical depression, at least I think so.
About 6 months ago, I was in nearly 3 month all-time-low mood, where everything looked like I have depression (I even thought that death or non-existence would be preferable), but still, when I got drunk and was with friends, I could feel somewhat happy, forget my emotional state, you could say. Then I thought - what the hell, you obviously can be happy! So why you are not? That made everything even worse, because I realized maybe it's me who is making me depressed, maybe it's because I subconsciously want to be depressed. Studies say that when people experience extreme emotions, such as sadness, their brains release chemicals they can become addicted to. It felt that way - when I fell into bed, and just said 'fuck it, I'm tired of fighting it, I will pity myself all I want', it felt satisfying in a weird way, where I was obviously not happy at all, but... I don't know, self-pity felt like only relief. And that only deepened the problem. It's like you are in a pit, have hit rock bottom, and you are starting to dig, because it's only thing you can really do, as doing nothing will certainly not make anything better. You know it's wrong. But you have to do something.
I don't remember exactly when I stopped to feel that way. It wasn't like 'hey, I am NOT depressed today! Yay!'. It was so gradual I realized it only several weeks ago. I suppose my friends helped me a lot. I tried to spend more time with them, which was probably the best decision. I can't think of my problems when with them and thus I couldn't make them worse by overthinking them or pitying myself. And thus it eventually faded away. It's not like I am social butterfly suddenly, I am still somewhat pessimistic, bitter and cynical, but I can appreciate and enjoy happiness from time to time. I don't know if that mood left because of them for sure though, maybe it was something else. I really don't know.
I know it was not a depression. Depression cannot fade away, you cannot forget it, you cannot do anything at all. If somebody tells you to be positive, it's like telling legless person to walk it out. It just doesn't work, because vital part of the plan is missing. So yeah, it was not a depression, but it was probably close. Since then I have huge sympathy for anybody who says they are depressed and are serious with it.
|
^Well I think depression can fade. I think people have recovered from it. I just don't think anyone has a really good idea of how or why in any given situation.
|
1) soo what was your childhood like? Do you have any happy memories from your earlier years?
2) What is your relationship like with your parents? What do you think of them and what do you think of their treatment towards you?
3) What kind of counselors did you see?
|
Oh, I didnt know you were Canadian.
Thanks for the post, it was a great read.
|
On August 05 2013 06:22 Shebuha wrote:
"I can grow from pain and I can temper anger, but I cannot process nothingness, when every moment is a second and a day and a year at once, all bumping into each other with nothing to distinguish them."
That's a really sick sentence. Poetic even. Damn. Thanks for writing it, it was a pleasure to read.
I really like the Stephen Fry quote:
“If you know someone who’s depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn't a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather."
I'm glad you enjoyed it, haha. Writing is something I've always enjoyed, and depression is easily the biggest hardship I've ever had to deal with, so I figured I might as well combine the two and make the world a little bit better. Well, that's the hope, anyway.
As for the Stephen Fry quote, I totally agree. Asking why someone is depressed is missing the point; people are depressed because they cannot be hopeful about their lives anymore. It doesn't matter whether the depression was triggered by the death of a loved one or by turning 25. Life looks pointless, empty, and, well, awful, to people who are depressed. Asking a depressed person why they're depressed is honestly just a totally unintelligible question to them. It's like asking them why they are who they are. They don't know, because how could they be anything else?
On August 05 2013 06:40 Overpowered wrote:
Great read. I can certainly relate to that, even though I haven't had clinical depression, at least I think so.
About 6 months ago, I was in nearly 3 month all-time-low mood, where everything looked like I have depression (I even thought that death or non-existence would be preferable), but still, when I got drunk and was with friends, I could feel somewhat happy, forget my emotional state, you could say. Then I thought - what the hell, you obviously can be happy! So why you are not? That made everything even worse, because I realized maybe it's me who is making me depressed, maybe it's because I subconsciously want to be depressed. Studies say that when people experience extreme emotions, such as sadness, their brains release chemicals they can become addicted to. It felt that way - when I fell into bed, and just said 'fuck it, I'm tired of fighting it, I will pity myself all I want', it felt satisfying in a weird way, where I was obviously not happy at all, but... I don't know, self-pity felt like only relief. And that only deepened the problem. It's like you are in a pit, have hit rock bottom, and you are starting to dig, because it's only thing you can really do, as doing nothing will certainly not make anything better. You know it's wrong. But you have to do something.
That sounds really awful. I'm glad you got past it. In some senses, it is addicting to be depressed, but not in the way you might expect, at least not for me. It's not so much that you want to have the feelings of the depression as it is that you don't want to just wake up and not be depressed anymore. Why? Because you think the depression is legitimate. It's not some random feeling, or something; it's something that makes sense to you, and you don't want someone to wipe your memory so you don't have it anymore.
I don't remember exactly when I stopped to feel that way. It wasn't like 'hey, I am NOT depressed today! Yay!'. It was so gradual I realized it only several weeks ago. I suppose my friends helped me a lot. I tried to spend more time with them, which was probably the best decision. I can't think of my problems when with them and thus I couldn't make them worse by overthinking them or pitying myself. And thus it eventually faded away. It's not like I am social butterfly suddenly, I am still somewhat pessimistic, bitter and cynical, but I can appreciate and enjoy happiness from time to time. I don't know if that mood left because of them for sure though, maybe it was something else. I really don't know.
Keeping busy can definitely help a lot with depression. It doesn't really cure the illness (at least not always) per se, but it slows the progress of the negative thinking and stops you from making bad decisions. Most people who end up doing harmful things as a result of depression do so when they have a lot of time to themselves, which they of course use to think more about how awful everything seems. While it's impossible to avoid thinking about one's depression indefinitely, it's important not to let yourself dwell on it all day, everyday. That said, a lot of people feel so terrible that they don't even have the strength to keep themselves busy. So it's a tough situation.
I know it was not a depression. Depression cannot fade away, you cannot forget it, you cannot do anything at all. If somebody tells you to be positive, it's like telling legless person to walk it out. It just doesn't work, because vital part of the plan is missing. So yeah, it was not a depression, but it was probably close. Since then I have huge sympathy for anybody who says they are depressed and are serious with it.
It's not my job to judge whether you were depressed or not. That's something only a trained professional (and to some extent, you) can do. I will say that while you are correct in a certain sense, it's not entirely true that depression never just fades. Sometimes it really does. Sometimes it seems completely random, but maybe actually isn't as random as one thinks. Sometimes tiny things can totally pull a person out of a depressive episode, but the important thing to remember is that it's pretty much impossible to predict when and if that will happen.
There are no fool-proof techniques to beating depression. If there were, nobody would be depressed, because if all one had to do was say "I'm not going to be sad anymore" or "I'm going to look forward to my future" then the problem would vanish. But you can't make yourself believe things. You can try to reason with yourself, but you won't necessarily succeed. The depression is extremely clever, because it's just as clever as you. I don't think it's really impossible to out-smart yourself, in that sense.
In the end, people who are depressed are depressed. Can they recover? Yes. Are there thinks that will probably aid their recovery? Yes. But do we know how long it will take and which techniques will be effective? No. We really don't. And for a depressed person, the longer it takes, the more difficult it is to keep hope alive.
1) soo what was your childhood like? Do you have any happy memories from your earlier years?
2) What is your relationship like with your parents? What do you think of them and what do you think of their treatment towards you?
3) What kind of counselors did you see?
1) My childhood was excellent. I was naive, pure of heart, never did anything mean to anyone (okay; the worst thing I did was shove a kid in grade 1) got perfect grades, had tonnes of friends, and was pretty oblivious to everything in the "real world." It took me until around grade 10 before I was given a rude awakening as to how...bizarrely mean people can be. I recovered, but I lost my naivete in doing so.
2) My parents are the best parents I could ask for. I tell my mom absolutely everything of note that happens to me (yes; literally everything, even whatever you're imagining). My dad doesn't really have my mom's counseling skills, but he loves me just as much, and he's always there to support me/take steps to help me/make things more manageable for me.
3) Right now I see a (really excellent) psychiatrist and a therapist specializing in cognitive behavioural treatments.
|
4) Did you ever consider that losing your naivete was inevitable? For example, I don't really think I can name a single person who would describe themselves as "naive" past the age of 18. (reworded)
4.5) Could you define "pure of heart"? What qualities or traits must one posess to be considered "pure of heart"?
5) What happened to all of those friends you had in your childhood. Do you keep in contact with any of them?
6) you also talk about your draughts of anxiety spells that come and go as they please. Do you think you suffer from a more severe amount of anxiety than normal people? (normal people too also experience anxiety. Anxiety actually is never ever going to go away, it is something that you feel repeatedly throughout your life)
|
On August 05 2013 07:21 Race is Terran wrote:
4) Did you ever consider that losing your naivete was inevitable? For example, I don't really think I can name a single person who still has a sense of naivete past the age of 18.
I guess you haven't met a lot of people then :D (or we have differing definitions for naivety)
Being naive has nothing to do with being depressed though.
edit:
By the way, I didn't want to write anything into this topic, but I'm going to anyways. I think it says a ton how when answering how you feel about your childhood your answer looks like this
1) My childhood was excellent. I was naive, pure of heart, never did anything mean to anyone (okay; the worst thing I did was shove a kid in grade 1) got perfect grades, had tonnes of friends, and was pretty oblivious to everything in the "real world." It took me until around grade 10 before I was given a rude awakening as to how...bizarrely mean people can be. I recovered, but I lost my naivete in doing so.
You aren't even talking about yourself and your feelings here, all you talk about is other people. Stop defining yourself through other people, if you fucking hate other people right now then this is how you feel and there is no reason to regret your thoughts and feelings, they are what they are and unless you are the only person in this world with magical powers you will never be able to hurt another person with your thoughts alone. If you ignore your feelings all the time and fake yourself through life just because you aren't "supposed to" feel the feelings you are feeling I personally think depression is a pretty rational thing to happen in the long term.
|
On August 05 2013 07:21 Race is Terran wrote:
4) Did you ever consider that losing your naivete was inevitable? For example, I don't really think I can name a single person who would describe themselves as "naive" past the age of 18. (reworded)
4.5) Could you define "pure of heart"? What qualities or traits must one posess to be considered "pure of heart"?
5) What happened to all of those friends you had in your childhood. Do you keep in contact with any of them?
6) you also talk about your draughts of anxiety spells that come and go as they please. Do you think you suffer from a more severe amount of anxiety than normal people? (normal people too also experience anxiety. Anxiety actually is never ever going to go away, it is something that you feel repeatedly throughout your life)
4) Yes. It was inevitable. But it was tragic nonetheless. EDIT: you reworded your question. At the time, I did not consider myself naive.
4.5) I was being hyperbolic/facetious, but, bluntly, I was just really kind. It never even occurred to me to really hate someone until I was sixteen, or so. Even since then, I usually have fairly high moral standards (which I hold to be true) but I am far more cynical than I once was, which is helpful in certain, pragmatic senses, but which also ends up fueling the depression when it strikes; it also hinders my ability to behave morally.
5) They lost their naivete earlier than I did, and they had different interests than me. I was a model student all the way through high school; I didn't care about partying, I didn't like being mischievous, I thought drugs/alcohol were an absolute waste of time, and, basically, I had very little in common with them. I eventually made other, closer friends in high school. In grade eleven, I became friends with some people one year ahead of me. They were the best group of friends I have ever had. Unfortunately, they all went to different schools, and, over the course of the next few years, they moved on to other things (and, to some extent, so did I). I still talk to them, periodically, but it simply isn't feasible for us to hang out very much anymore; as such, they've made other groups of friends, which is fine. I've made some, too, but none whom I am as close to as I was with them. Aside from that group of friends, one of my close friends moved to Europe, another moved all over the country, and, in the process, I lost closeness with them. The one who moved across the country and I still talk, but, again, he's in a different place in his life now. I don't blame anyone, really. Life happens to people, and you do what you can at the time. There's no use regretting it.
6) I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder and OCD, so yes. That said, my anxiety is under control, and has been for about six months or so. Also, I am well aware of what I anxiety is; over the course of the past several years, I've read dozens and dozens of books/studies/scholarly articles regarding depression/anxiety/ocd/adhd, and a whole lot else. I'm not trying to be critical of your question; just letting you know that I'm not clueless about this.
On August 05 2013 07:24 Bommes wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2013 07:21 Race is Terran wrote:
4) Did you ever consider that losing your naivete was inevitable? For example, I don't really think I can name a single person who still has a sense of naivete past the age of 18.
I guess you haven't met a lot of people then. Being naive has nothing to do with being depressive though.
Agreed.
edit: By the way, I didn't want to write anything into this topic, but I'm going to anyways. I think it says a ton how when answering how you feel about your childhood your answer looks like this Show nested quote + 1) My childhood was excellent. I was naive, pure of heart, never did anything mean to anyone (okay; the worst thing I did was shove a kid in grade 1) got perfect grades, had tonnes of friends, and was pretty oblivious to everything in the "real world." It took me until around grade 10 before I was given a rude awakening as to how...bizarrely mean people can be. I recovered, but I lost my naivete in doing so. You aren't even talking about yourself and your feelings here, all you talk about is other people. Stop defining yourself through other people, if you fucking hate other people right now then this is how you feel and there is no fucking reason to regret your thoughts and feelings, they are what they are and unless you are the only person in this world with magical powers you will never be able to hurt another person with your thoughts alone. If you ignore your feelings all the time and fake yourself through life just because you aren't "supposed to" feel the feelings you are feeling I personally think depression is a pretty rational thing to happen in the long term.
I wrote around three thousand words about myself in the OP. I'm not sure what you'd like me to say about my identity during my childhood. I was a kid. I was naive. I was kind, foolish, gullible, emotional, and usually happy. I don't define myself through other people in the slightest. That's the whole problem, in a sense. I've created such beautiful definitions for myself, and at the time I really thought they were wonderful; indeed, it's comforting to hate people and take pride in staying true to oneself. But I couldn't sustain that image forever. It's not so much that people expected things of me as it was that I expected things of myself, and people bought into those expectations and fostered them.
But, honestly, my depression has nothing to do with my expectations. I once thought it did, but it doesn't. I don't fake myself through life, and I'm always honest with my feelings these days (too honest, if anything). The trouble is that that doesn't make me look forward much to tomorrow.
I don't regret disliking the way the world/people are. It's not a choice; it's just the way I see things right now. What I regret is giving into my hatred and doing cruel things (doesn't happen often) because in doing that, I'm betraying myself; if I were a hateful and cruel person, then I probably wouldn't be depressed about the world/people, because I'd have no problem acting in fashions that my cynicism presently condemns. Sometimes I feel as if the only options are to endure the depression inevitably or abandon my own values/morals/identity. The latter is obviously not possible, since I think that I am worth something. The former is what I have been doing, but, lately, one starts to wonder if it's worth it. Sometimes I wonder if suicide wouldn't really be some great act of love for myself, in a sense. It's all very confusing.
Please try to avoid reading too much into a sentence or two.
|
being the kind hearted person you are, do you still expect or think about "kindness from strangers"?
oh, and do you consider yourself a perfectionist?
YOu say that the latter, abandoning your own values/morals/identity is not possible. However, people in the course of their lifetimes make mistakes and learn from them. In that process, they gradually change who they are hence someone in their 20s will generally not be the same 20 years from now.
Why do you dislike the way the world/people are? is it because of how cruel some things can be in this world? (halocaust, executions, religious warfare, AIDS even, rape, serial killers, prostitute rings, drug addicts)
|
On August 05 2013 08:24 Race is Terran wrote:
being the kind hearted person you are, do you still expect or think about "kindness from strangers"?
I don't expect it.
oh, and do you consider yourself a perfectionist?
Yes. Although I don't really do so much of that anymore, since my functionality has been impaired so much by depression.
YOu say that the latter, abandoning your own values/morals/identity is not possible. However, people in the course of their lifetimes make mistakes and learn from them. In that process, they gradually change who they are hence someone in their 20s will generally not be the same 20 years from now.
Yes, you're not wrong. However, there are some things which I consider flexible beliefs and some which I do not. I don't think I'll ever thing that lying, or degrading people, or manipulating people are anything but essentially immoral. My identity could possibly be reconstructed, in some sense, like I did last time, but I haven't figured out a compelling enough idea. I used "believe that you will be happy someday" last time, and, well, it's hard to believe that after so long. I'm not saying that I'm being logical; I'm just saying that the belief doesn't hold weight much for me anymore.
Why do you dislike the way the world/people are? is it because of how cruel some things can be in this world? (halocaust, executions, religious warfare, AIDS even, rape, serial killers, prostitute rings, drug addicts)
I can deal with grand atrocities like that, actually. They're abstract and far away. I hate that people are apathetic and indifferent about life in general. I hate that they lie to their families/friends/loved ones like nothing, I hate that they are judgmental, I hate that they are imperfect and pin all their hopes on little things like marriage or next weekend's party. But I don't hate them, in another sense. I really, really envy them. They have their imperfections, and some of the things that they do are immoral, but they're also much happier than I am. And I love them, honestly. I might say I hate them sometimes, but I really love them. That's why I can't become cynical; deep down, I'm glad they are alive and happy and full of life. I'm really, really glad that they seem to be finding their place in the world a little easier than I am (I'm aware that that sounds really arrogant, but it's honestly the way I feel a lot of the time). And it's not like I'm perfect or perfectly moral myself, either. I really wish I was someone else, and I don't mean that in a condescending "I'm smarter than you plebeians" kind of way. The stuff that most people I've known look forward to/dream of/are content with...just doesn't do anything for me. And I have no idea what to replace it with.
I don't even really want to be happy anymore, to be honest; I'd settle for not being sad, at this point.
|
Don't have much to add other than I hope things work out for you!!!
|
On August 05 2013 08:09 Shiori wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2013 07:24 Bommes wrote:On August 05 2013 07:21 Race is Terran wrote:
4) Did you ever consider that losing your naivete was inevitable? For example, I don't really think I can name a single person who still has a sense of naivete past the age of 18.
I guess you haven't met a lot of people then. Being naive has nothing to do with being depressive though. Agreed. Show nested quote +edit: By the way, I didn't want to write anything into this topic, but I'm going to anyways. I think it says a ton how when answering how you feel about your childhood your answer looks like this 1) My childhood was excellent. I was naive, pure of heart, never did anything mean to anyone (okay; the worst thing I did was shove a kid in grade 1) got perfect grades, had tonnes of friends, and was pretty oblivious to everything in the "real world." It took me until around grade 10 before I was given a rude awakening as to how...bizarrely mean people can be. I recovered, but I lost my naivete in doing so. You aren't even talking about yourself and your feelings here, all you talk about is other people. Stop defining yourself through other people, if you fucking hate other people right now then this is how you feel and there is no fucking reason to regret your thoughts and feelings, they are what they are and unless you are the only person in this world with magical powers you will never be able to hurt another person with your thoughts alone. If you ignore your feelings all the time and fake yourself through life just because you aren't "supposed to" feel the feelings you are feeling I personally think depression is a pretty rational thing to happen in the long term. I wrote around three thousand words about myself in the OP. I'm not sure what you'd like me to say about my identity during my childhood. I was a kid. I was naive. I was kind, foolish, gullible, emotional, and usually happy. I don't define myself through other people in the slightest. That's the whole problem, in a sense. I've created such beautiful definitions for myself, and at the time I really thought they were wonderful; indeed, it's comforting to hate people and take pride in staying true to oneself. But I couldn't sustain that image forever. It's not so much that people expected things of me as it was that I expected things of myself, and people bought into those expectations and fostered them. But, honestly, my depression has nothing to do with my expectations. I once thought it did, but it doesn't. I don't fake myself through life, and I'm always honest with my feelings these days (too honest, if anything). The trouble is that that doesn't make me look forward much to tomorrow. I don't regret disliking the way the world/people are. It's not a choice; it's just the way I see things right now. What I regret is giving into my hatred and doing cruel things (doesn't happen often) because in doing that, I'm betraying myself; if I were a hateful and cruel person, then I probably wouldn't be depressed about the world/people, because I'd have no problem acting in fashions that my cynicism presently condemns. Sometimes I feel as if the only options are to endure the depression inevitably or abandon my own values/morals/identity. The latter is obviously not possible, since I think that I am worth something. The former is what I have been doing, but, lately, one starts to wonder if it's worth it. Sometimes I wonder if suicide wouldn't really be some great act of love for myself, in a sense. It's all very confusing. Please try to avoid reading too much into a sentence or two.
But I don't see how that contradicts my opinion of the situation. I mean it's really hard for me to not quote single sentences out of your text because it is really hard for me to grasp them from a logical standpoint. In one sentence you talk about how it's comforting to take pride in staying true to oneself, in the next sentence you talk about how you can't sustain that image. But how are you true to yourself when it's an image you created in your mind?
You talk about betraying yourself when you do cruel things, but doing these cruel things (whatever they are) in the first place is the opposite of betraying yourself, because doing them felt right in the moment and you did them because it was what you wanted to do at that moment. Was it the best thing you could have done in that situation? Probably not, but it was still a legimitate thing to do in the situation you were in. And accepting that as a part of you that gives you an opportunity to change as a person is really important. (I rephrased that last sentence, I didn't really like how I worded it earlier)
|
do you believe happiness is a choice?
Your belief "believe that you will be happy someday" is much more an optimist than a realist (not a pessimest). You can believe all you want whatever you want your future to be, but if you don't take any affirmative action in that direction, that will never be true.
Have you seen Pursuit of Happyness? if not, I recommend watching it, it's based off of the autobiography of Chris Gardner. At one point in his life, Chris struggled with homelessness while raising a kid. Although he was reduced to basically nothing (no money, no wife, no home at one point), he still kept it all together. Why not just call it quits? Why not just give up? How could someone with nothing still manage to keep it all together?
Oh also, when you do a small favor for someone, such as hold the door open for a stranger, what goes through your mind?
|
On August 05 2013 09:02 Bommes wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2013 08:09 Shiori wrote:On August 05 2013 07:24 Bommes wrote:On August 05 2013 07:21 Race is Terran wrote:
4) Did you ever consider that losing your naivete was inevitable? For example, I don't really think I can name a single person who still has a sense of naivete past the age of 18.
I guess you haven't met a lot of people then. Being naive has nothing to do with being depressive though. Agreed. edit: By the way, I didn't want to write anything into this topic, but I'm going to anyways. I think it says a ton how when answering how you feel about your childhood your answer looks like this 1) My childhood was excellent. I was naive, pure of heart, never did anything mean to anyone (okay; the worst thing I did was shove a kid in grade 1) got perfect grades, had tonnes of friends, and was pretty oblivious to everything in the "real world." It took me until around grade 10 before I was given a rude awakening as to how...bizarrely mean people can be. I recovered, but I lost my naivete in doing so. You aren't even talking about yourself and your feelings here, all you talk about is other people. Stop defining yourself through other people, if you fucking hate other people right now then this is how you feel and there is no fucking reason to regret your thoughts and feelings, they are what they are and unless you are the only person in this world with magical powers you will never be able to hurt another person with your thoughts alone. If you ignore your feelings all the time and fake yourself through life just because you aren't "supposed to" feel the feelings you are feeling I personally think depression is a pretty rational thing to happen in the long term. I wrote around three thousand words about myself in the OP. I'm not sure what you'd like me to say about my identity during my childhood. I was a kid. I was naive. I was kind, foolish, gullible, emotional, and usually happy. I don't define myself through other people in the slightest. That's the whole problem, in a sense. I've created such beautiful definitions for myself, and at the time I really thought they were wonderful; indeed, it's comforting to hate people and take pride in staying true to oneself. But I couldn't sustain that image forever. It's not so much that people expected things of me as it was that I expected things of myself, and people bought into those expectations and fostered them. But, honestly, my depression has nothing to do with my expectations. I once thought it did, but it doesn't. I don't fake myself through life, and I'm always honest with my feelings these days (too honest, if anything). The trouble is that that doesn't make me look forward much to tomorrow. I don't regret disliking the way the world/people are. It's not a choice; it's just the way I see things right now. What I regret is giving into my hatred and doing cruel things (doesn't happen often) because in doing that, I'm betraying myself; if I were a hateful and cruel person, then I probably wouldn't be depressed about the world/people, because I'd have no problem acting in fashions that my cynicism presently condemns. Sometimes I feel as if the only options are to endure the depression inevitably or abandon my own values/morals/identity. The latter is obviously not possible, since I think that I am worth something. The former is what I have been doing, but, lately, one starts to wonder if it's worth it. Sometimes I wonder if suicide wouldn't really be some great act of love for myself, in a sense. It's all very confusing. Please try to avoid reading too much into a sentence or two. But I don't see how that contradicts my opinion of the situation. I mean it's really hard for me to not quote single sentences out of your text because it is really hard for me to grasp them from a logical standpoint. In one sentence you talk about how it's comforting to take pride in staying true to oneself, in the next sentence you talk about how you can't sustain that image. But how are you true to yourself when it's an image you created in your mind?
There is no identity but what we see ourselves to be. I am me. What I think of myself is what I am. There is nothing else.
You talk about betraying yourself when you do cruel things, but doing these cruel things (whatever they are) in the first place is the opposite of betraying yourself, because doing them felt right in the moment and you did them because it was what you wanted to do at that moment.
No. It was what felt right in the moment, but it was not what I wanted to do. I know what I want to do, but sometimes the pain and the anger are so much that it becomes difficult to resist them. Imagine it like taking a drug. You know that it's not the right thing to do, and you don't want to do it. But sometimes you give in because you just don't have the strength to fight it anymore.
Was it the best thing you could have done in that situation? Probably not, but it was still a legimitate thing to do in the situation you were in. And as soon as you accept that you can work on not repeating these cruel things and start learning from these mistakes. If you don't accept that they are part of you you can never learn to not get into situations like this again.
You don't really understand, I think. I know that it's bad to do cruel things. I know that I shouldn't repeat them, and I don't repeat them. I accept that I make mistakes, and that I'll continue to make them. But that doesn't help me at all, because the cruel things are nothing more than temporary relief from the sheer nothingness that I feel. Even if I successfully resist doing cruel things, I'm still empty and dead inside, so it's not like I feel any happier.
On August 05 2013 09:02 Race is Terran wrote:
do you believe happiness is a choice?
In a sense, yes. Happiness, to me, is just contentment with the choices you've made, with the life you've picked for yourself, and with your goals/dreams/place in the world. In that sense, it's sorta a choice, and it's hypothetically possible in this definition to feel miserable and still be "happy" overall, but in practice, I haven't been happy in ages.
Your belief "believe that you will be happy someday" is much more an optimist than a realist (not a pessimest). You can believe all you want whatever you want your future to be, but if you don't take any affirmative action in that direction, that will never be true.
I took tonnes of actions. I have tried so, so many things, and none of them were enough to keep me from falling back into this garbage. I took time off of school, I went to different therapists, I went to different psychiatrists, I tried different medications, I exercised, I ate better, I slept more consistently, I made short-term goals for myself, I exposed myself to stress, I worked on one problem at a time, I rewarded my successes, I tried new things, I made new friends, I did things outside of my comfort zone, I tried not to think about happiness, I tried thinking about happiness, I tried helping people, I tried not helping people, I tried writing, I tried talking, I tried gambling, I tried fantasizing.
I am tired. I'm not saying I've tried everything, or that I've done all these things perfectly, but I am tired. I'm tired of fixing one problem and finding a bigger one underneath it. I'm tired of being tired, and I'm tired of hoping that I'll fix it all. It's just too much effort, and I'm running out of strength. That sounds pathetic, I know, but it's the truth. I just don't know if I have it in me anymore.
Have you seen Pursuit of Happyness? if not, I recommend watching it, it's based off of the autobiography of Chris Gardner. At one point in his life, Chris struggled with homelessness while raising a kid. Although he was reduced to basically nothing (no money, no wife, no home at one point), he still kept it all together. Why not just call it quits? Why not just give up? How could someone with nothing still manage to keep it all together?
I will watch it when I have a chance. I have no idea how he was able to do all that. Evidently he was a much better person than I am.
Oh also, when you do a small favor for someone, such as hold the door open for a stranger, what goes through your mind?
I do these things automatically because I like to help people and because it makes me sad to see people in difficulty (homeless people etc., I always give them whatever I can afford to give).
|
so, if happiness is contentment of the choices you've made, how are people content making mistakes? Not every choice you make is the best one, hindsight tells us that and mistakes are unavoidable. So is stress, it is unavoidable and trying to avoid it is a futile effort. I mean, it's doing something that basically can't be done, hence if you try over and over and nothing works, I can understand how that would make you tired. and fast too
|
There is no identity but what we see ourselves to be. I am me. What I think of myself is what I am. There is nothing else.
Well, evidently you think that you are something, yet you act like you are something completely different because you do stuff you don't want to do. So unless your body and your brain are separated that statement is just wrong, you are the sum of all your bodyparts so you are the sum of your thoughts and your actions.
No. It was what felt right in the moment, but it was not what I wanted to do. I know what I want to do, but sometimes the pain and the anger are so much that it becomes difficult to resist them. Imagine it like taking a drug. You know that it's not the right thing to do, and you don't want to do it. But sometimes you give in because you just don't have the strength to fight it anymore.
Again, I don't see how that contradicts my point. I don't think drugs are inherently a bad thing though, in the end medicines are drugs. It's all about how an individual uses the drug. It only gets a problem if you use that drug on other people against their will or if you hurt other people because of the influence of your emotions/drugs. There is no inherent right or wrong about drug usage or acting based on emotions. It can get bad if you hurt other people of course, but if that happens then it is what it is, you can always find a way to redeem yourself.
You don't really understand, I think. I know that it's bad to do cruel things. I know that I shouldn't repeat them, and I don't repeat them. I accept that I make mistakes, and that I'll continue to make them. But that doesn't help me at all, because the cruel things are nothing more than temporary relief from the sheer nothingness that I feel. Even if I successfully resist doing cruel things, I'm still empty and dead inside, so it's not like I feel any happier.
The fact that you talk and care about your family and want to do the "right" thing in itself means that you are not dead inside.
Now, maybe that changes, and some day in the future you don't care about your family anymore. Does that make you dead inside? No, there are still a million things that make you alive and are a beautiful part of having human perception, you just might not choose to acknowledge them. Maybe that life isn't good enough for what you perceive a life "should be", and a life where you can't love your family anymore isn't worth living. And I guess that's a reasonable statement for some people, it just depends on what you believe in. For me the statement that feeling emptiness and nothingness is just an opportunity for realizing that you are able to do whatever the fuck you want and see your life as an experiment is much more reasonable.
|
On August 05 2013 09:51 Bommes wrote:Show nested quote +There is no identity but what we see ourselves to be. I am me. What I think of myself is what I am. There is nothing else. Well, evidently you think that you are something, yet you act like you are something completely different because you do stuff you don't want to do. So unless your body and your brain are separated that statement is just wrong, you are the sum of all your bodyparts so you are the sum of your thoughts and your actions.
I do those things because they make the pain stop for a moment. I am weak, in that respect, because the pain comes back stronger afterward. My brain is what it is, but sometimes my will isn't strong enough to resist the intense emotional barrages. I mean, it's not that I want to do one thing or another so much as it is that eventually I get too tired to resist my emotions. Once that happens, I just lose all control.
No. It was what felt right in the moment, but it was not what I wanted to do. I know what I want to do, but sometimes the pain and the anger are so much that it becomes difficult to resist them. Imagine it like taking a drug. You know that it's not the right thing to do, and you don't want to do it. But sometimes you give in because you just don't have the strength to fight it anymore.
Again, I don't see how that contradicts my point. I don't think drugs are inherently a bad thing though, in the end medicines are drugs. It's all about how an individual uses the drug. It only gets a problem if you use that drug on other people against their will or if you hurt other people because of the influence of your emotions/drugs. There is no inherent right or wrong about drug usage or acting based on emotions. It can get bad if you hurt other people of course, but if that happens then it is what it is, you can always find a way to redeem yourself.
I meant drug addiction. When I give in to the cruelty, I do so because it relieves the pain. But it brings the pain back later plus the knowledge that I sacrificed my own beliefs for the sake of a momentary escape. It's like drinking excessively to get over a loss. You might feel a little better for a few hours, but you still don't get any closer to accepting the loss.
You don't really understand, I think. I know that it's bad to do cruel things. I know that I shouldn't repeat them, and I don't repeat them. I accept that I make mistakes, and that I'll continue to make them. But that doesn't help me at all, because the cruel things are nothing more than temporary relief from the sheer nothingness that I feel. Even if I successfully resist doing cruel things, I'm still empty and dead inside, so it's not like I feel any happier.
The fact that you talk and care about your family and want to do the "right" thing in itself means that you are not dead inside.
Now, maybe that changes, and some day in the future you don't care about your family anymore. Does that make you dead inside? No, there are still a million things that make you alive and are a beautiful part of having human perception, you just might not choose to acknowledge them. Maybe that life isn't good enough for what you perceive a life "should be", and a life where you can't love your family anymore isn't worth living. And I guess that's a reasonable statement for some people, it just depends on what you believe in. For me the statement that feeling emptiness and nothingness is just an opportunity for realizing that you are able to do whatever the fuck you want and see your life as an experiment is much more reasonable.
I want to do the right thing because I love myself. To me, loving myself means that suicide might be merciful. I am dead inside in the sense that, many times, I feel nothing at all. I don't know how to explain that in a way that is comprehensible to people who haven't experienced it, but I can't tolerate it. It's too much.
|
On August 05 2013 10:16 Shiori wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2013 09:51 Bommes wrote:There is no identity but what we see ourselves to be. I am me. What I think of myself is what I am. There is nothing else. Well, evidently you think that you are something, yet you act like you are something completely different because you do stuff you don't want to do. So unless your body and your brain are separated that statement is just wrong, you are the sum of all your bodyparts so you are the sum of your thoughts and your actions. I do those things because they make the pain stop for a moment. I am weak, in that respect, because the pain comes back stronger afterward. My brain is what it is, but sometimes my will isn't strong enough to resist the intense emotional barrages. I mean, it's not that I want to do one thing or another so much as it is that eventually I get too tired to resist my emotions. Once that happens, I just lose all control. Show nested quote +No. It was what felt right in the moment, but it was not what I wanted to do. I know what I want to do, but sometimes the pain and the anger are so much that it becomes difficult to resist them. Imagine it like taking a drug. You know that it's not the right thing to do, and you don't want to do it. But sometimes you give in because you just don't have the strength to fight it anymore. Show nested quote +Again, I don't see how that contradicts my point. I don't think drugs are inherently a bad thing though, in the end medicines are drugs. It's all about how an individual uses the drug. It only gets a problem if you use that drug on other people against their will or if you hurt other people because of the influence of your emotions/drugs. There is no inherent right or wrong about drug usage or acting based on emotions. It can get bad if you hurt other people of course, but if that happens then it is what it is, you can always find a way to redeem yourself. I meant drug addiction. When I give in to the cruelty, I do so because it relieves the pain. But it brings the pain back later plus the knowledge that I sacrificed my own beliefs for the sake of a momentary escape. It's like drinking excessively to get over a loss. You might feel a little better for a few hours, but you still don't get any closer to accepting the loss. Show nested quote +You don't really understand, I think. I know that it's bad to do cruel things. I know that I shouldn't repeat them, and I don't repeat them. I accept that I make mistakes, and that I'll continue to make them. But that doesn't help me at all, because the cruel things are nothing more than temporary relief from the sheer nothingness that I feel. Even if I successfully resist doing cruel things, I'm still empty and dead inside, so it's not like I feel any happier. Show nested quote +The fact that you talk and care about your family and want to do the "right" thing in itself means that you are not dead inside.
Now, maybe that changes, and some day in the future you don't care about your family anymore. Does that make you dead inside? No, there are still a million things that make you alive and are a beautiful part of having human perception, you just might not choose to acknowledge them. Maybe that life isn't good enough for what you perceive a life "should be", and a life where you can't love your family anymore isn't worth living. And I guess that's a reasonable statement for some people, it just depends on what you believe in. For me the statement that feeling emptiness and nothingness is just an opportunity for realizing that you are able to do whatever the fuck you want and see your life as an experiment is much more reasonable. I want to do the right thing because I love myself. To me, loving myself means that suicide might be merciful. I am dead inside in the sense that, many times, I feel nothing at all. I don't know how to explain that in a way that is comprehensible to people who haven't experienced it, but I can't tolerate it. It's too much.
its basically like youve lost the ability to "care" for anything right?
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
