I think in images the best way for me to describe my depression is that I can see myself at the bottom of a dark well. The bones in my body are broken so, I can’t get out. I am screaming from the top of my lungs, but no one can hear me. The point of view shifts to the stones that make up the well and into the impenetrable darkness. Next, the viewpoint changes and turns into my hair so, I can get a full view of me and watch myself utter “No, I am fine. I am just a little bit tired. Once I get a nap, I will be fine” Except, I have been tired for more than half my life and there isn’t any real end in sight.
I heard someone say in conversation that they hated how people claimed that they have mental health issues as an excuse for everything. It seemed so funny to me how little understanding they had. I suppose that is the case for most things. People can empathize up to a point, but their imagination can only take them so far for some things. Someone who has not been through it will not be able to understand how you can sit, laugh, and have a good time and then suddenly something in your brain shifts. Suddenly, all the colour drains from the world, and it turns into this bleak scene filled with despair. You are no longer of the world; you are just a witness to your own life.
I suppose people that suffer from depression are liars up to a point but, not in the way that people might think. We lie that we are fine. We lie that we are just a little bit blue. We lie that we just need a nap. We lie that it has just been a long week. I can talk to anyone, and I will seem the happiest person on Earth. I will be engaging, and chatty, I will put the focus on you. I remember one day when I had intrusive thoughts coming again and again, up to the point where I had to voice them and simulate the action to soothe my brain. I had been crying for quite some time and then someone wanted to go on a call with me. So, there I went on the call, all smiles, to the point that there was a comment made about how chipper I was so early in the morning. I never realized how much of a poker face I had. I always wondered how people didn’t realize that I was struggling but how can they when I wear the mask of fitting in so well?
The truth is that there is still a lot of shame in admitting that one is depressed. We are all meant to be happy all the time. Everything is meant to be just smiles, rainbows, and unicorns. “Only good vibes here!” We look at other people’s lives and what they project as their lifestyle, and we compare. We know we would want to be like that, but we don’t know how to get there. It isn’t a matter of faking it until you make it, it is a matter of hiding everything you are so people accept you. Everybody knows how to play the game apart from you. Even further, telling somebody that you have suicidal thoughts…watch the panic wash over their face as you realize that you have put a burden on someone that was not theirs to carry.
I tried to think when all of this started for me. I can remember feeling alone, I can remember reaching out for connection and being denied. I remember wondering why I couldn’t be loved and soothing myself that it is fine, I don’t need anybody, that I will be fine and once I grow up, I will find somebody to love me. That changed into the certainty that people won’t like me because there is nothing to like. The strong feeling is that I was broken, and once people realize how broken I am, they will leave. Shifted again in the darkest times to think that I am so broken that I have broken other people. That they would have been better off by not knowing me. That I ruin everything I touch. My demons are always by my side, ready to agree with me. They used to be ideas chucked at me in anger by others, but now they live inside me, and they are my loyal companions. Internalized, bonded with every fibre of my being. “You are not good enough.” “Nobody cares what you have to say.” “Who do you think you are?.” The gang is all here, lurking in the shadows.
I have always had problems sleeping. Staying up late and going over everything that I have done that day in my mind. Trying to remember every detail. How things were said. The words, the tone, the inflexions in the voice. Beat myself up about everything that I said, everything that I did, everything that I should have said. Going around and around and when I didn’t have something that happened that day, my brain had something from years ago that I could sit and hate myself about. Causing myself more and more pain for things that I could not change. Not wanting to be who I am, not wanting to be where I am. Just more shame. I have had weeks when I would skip a night to sleep a night. I would be too exhausted to sleep and watching the worst infomercials possible. Then, it would shift. I would feel like my body is full of led and I would just sleep for hours. I have had days when I prayed that once I fell asleep, I wouldn’t wake up. Trying to sleep my way through my existence, hoping that it would change on its own. Disappointment would hit the next day when my eyes would open.
I have pushed down inside of me all the feelings and I have tried to keep myself busy. If I don’t have time to deal with whatever I am feeling, then it isn’t happening, right? I have started to prioritize everything and everybody above me so, that I can keep running from myself. I kept on following myself and telling myself all these things, tormenting myself with all my mistakes. Telling myself that I am weak and wanting and nobody could ever see value in me. Nobody can ever hurt you like you hurt yourself. I kept on asking myself what I was waiting for. What do I expect to happen? How do I expect things to change? They never did or if they did, it was only for a little while and I kept thinking that I failed for staying strong and not giving in. I allowed myself to be seduced by a moment of happiness that just got me back to where I was in the beginning.
It always seemed that I had islands of happiness and then things would get back to the way they were. I had a period when I used to live alone and when I had a really bad day, I would go to one of the corners of my room sit between the wall and my bookcase and lean against the wall. This felt comfortable, this felt safe. I just mindlessly saw that corner and felt the urge to get up and sit there. One friend saw me one time and asked me what I was doing. I thought about it for the first time, then and there. What was I doing? I realized that this felt safe because three directions were covered and everything that could come at me would just come from the front.
I would feel the need for connection. I would try to reach out and the people would just get further away from me. I had become convinced that people don’t just leave but, they leave me. I kept on trying, again and again, to just show people who I am but how effective was that when one does not have the power to stay myself without changing to who I think they want me to be? To stay around people and not filter who comes into my life but just hope that there will be more people staying. Feeling less connection than ever because one realizes that people put you in a box and they become very uncomfortable when you try to change, evolve, or get out of the box.
One tries to find a cure. One tries to get away from it. One tries to look at how others have done it to try and escape the loop. For me, it took a breakup to put me in front of all my fears at once. Just the day before, I was saying that if it were ever to happen, I would not be able to take care of myself and then I had to. But that is a story for another time…
To be continued...
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