The thing that is the most frustrating for someone who suffers from depression is that it is impossible to know what is going to set you off. One minute you can be doing a chore, or listening to a song, or watching TV, or cooking, and the next you’re sobbing for no readily apparent reason. You could be ready to take on the world, energetic, full of vim and vigor, and then find yourself morosely upset about everything, unable to get up, find food, or perform any of the basic tasks that it would take to leave the house. In some ways, being depressed is like playing a role playing game: you could be a very healthy, extremely well-off character who laughs at the thought they could ever miss a target, and then find themselves on their ass because they randomly failed at something like walking up the steps. There’s a lot of questioning and wondering how it could be possible, and yet you know it is, because it happened.
As long as I can remember I’ve have ups and downs with my own depression. There were times I spent in therapy, and other times I was on medication (prescribed and self-administered), and still other times when I could not bring myself to leave the house, followed by years of positive experiences that were never questioned or even considered. I’m sure that many of my hobbies do not lend themselves to the kind of person that can become depressed. I like my chemical intake, my preferred profession does not include a lot of physical exertion, and I am a fan of many sedentary activities. I am not unhealthy, though I should probably quit smoking, and my diet could probably use a little management. But I’m conscious of the condition I happen to be in, and I’m constantly monitoring my own ability to do the things that I’ve always been able to do. Aside from loosing a tooth recently, there have been few ailments that did not run a normal course before returning to normal.
So, good but not great. And the literature does support the notion that if you are not in peak physical health, you could be more prone to depression. However, this is something I’ve been combatting since a time when I ran six miles a day, when I had no unhealthy habits, and when I was in the best physical condition I’ve ever been in. While I’m sure my current habits don’t help, there is something deeper at work. There could be a bit of a linguistic component to this, too. Over time, the experiences and events that we internalize become the framework through which we see the world around us. When you start to combine your parents divorce, your breakups, your betrayals, and add to it a formal education that reinforces a pessimistic view of the world, reality itself starts to appear to be coded in a way that is founded on misery. Though, I’m not sure how accurate that may be, either, considering that there are long periods – sometimes up to a year or so – where nothing occurs that inspires any kind of misery, no matter how bad things might be.
It seems to me the kind of depression that I experience is founded entirely on the random chance. Which is to say, it is unpredictable, seems influenced by my own brain chemistry, and finds comfort in the misery of the past while content to ignore all of these at a moment’s notice. I used to think I was manic / depressive, but I’m pretty sure this is not the case. I don’t have manic episodes in the same way that I have seen others experience them, and I seem to fluctuate between “socially acceptable” and “miserable,” rather than the hyperactive energy that manic people tend to have at their disposal.
The most difficult thing to communicate when you are depressed is that it is a real thing that you cannot control, and that this is not a situation where you can shut it off, or something that you can just smile and ignore. At moments of depression, it is a full body experience. You are sad. You don’t have any energy. You can barely express yourself in a production, positive way. If you could snap out of it, if you could just pretend that you are fine and go about your day, you would just do that. Anyone would. But it is like an illness, in that it actually aches. You have no energy to draw upon to go about your day. Nothing you hear anyone says can cheer you up. Sometimes, the best you can do is make yourself something to eat and hope it goes away.
But when you try to explain this to someone who doesn’t suffer from depression, they have no grounds for comparison. Most people are not paralyzed when they feel upset, or morose. Most people find that these feelings go away and they can still put on a happy face and go about their day. Most people don’t understand what you mean when you say, “I’m depressed,” because their entire relationship with being depressed is a temporary one. They don’t understand that these feelings come back, over and over again, and last for days, and sometimes weeks. The language that exists surrounding depression is one sided on both ends of the conversation, where the terms we used to express these ideas mean different things to both parties.
There’s not real conclusion to these thoughts, and no solution to these problems. I’ve been in therapy a few times, and these experiences convinced me that talking to someone is not a solution, but closer to the act of taking medication. Talking helps in the short-term, but does not cure anything. Medication itself is very temporary, and sometimes the side-effects are worse than the problem it is supposed to cure. (One pill I was taking caused me to throw up, like clockwork, every day, without eliminating any of the depression.) In some ways, dealing with depression is like dealing with the tedium of everyday life. It is ever present, and on-going, and there are things we can do to temporarily ignore these problems. But it does not fix anything, and it is still there afterward.
More than anything, I wish people could understand my point of view. I do not want to feel like this, and I would will it away if that were all that it would take to be rid of it. But something that genuinely helps is understanding. To know that someone else sees that this is a real problem, that it is something that we suffer from, and that we really are doing the best we can, is sometimes the biggest help in the world.
To put it another way: everyone is guilty of having a habit, or a behavior, or some element to their humanity that they are not comfortable with. These aspect of their person rears its head from time to time, and is not something they can manage consciously. It just happens. Wouldn’t they want someone to be understanding when it comes up in public? Wouldn’t they prefer to be seen as a person who needs sympathy and understanding?
Austin Rich 