A mistake.
It was a mistake to come back this semester.
It would have been a mistake to be cowardly.
It is a mistake to choose to do assignments instead of sleep.
It is a mistake to choose sleep and get nothing done.
It is a mistake to go out and have fun.
It is a mistake to stay home, you don't get anything done anyway.
It is a mistake to be around friends; you're a downer.
It is a mistake to be alone; there is nothing to distract you.
It is a mistake to keep trying when everything is going wrong.
It is a mistake to run away.
It is a mistake to keep hoping.
It is a mistake to lose faith.
Depression is a mistake. A mistake, after mistake, after mistake, after mistake.
A ball.
At first full of texture and colour,
Then it begins to grow dull.
You stare, anxious, and hold it tight.
Then it becomes softer, slippery,
And everything is shades of gray.
You struggle to hold on, but it keeps slipping away.
Soon, it will become nothing of substance,
Fade away, bit by bit by bit,
Until you have nothing to hold onto.
Reality is a little ball. You do your best to hold on to it, frantically squeeze it, but it fades, confuses, and slips out of your grasp.
Depression.
Depression is a mental illness. ('It involves some combination of the following symptoms: depressed mood (sadness), poor concentration, insomnia, fatigue, appetite disturbances, excessive guilt and thoughts of suicide.')
Depression saps the energy we need to live, and eventually the will to live.
Depression is contested to be a chemical imbalance in our brains, but we have no solid facts on how it really works.
Depression is as real as being blind, having cancer, or having the flu. In fact, it is so common it's called the 'mental flu'.
Depression is an illness, not some made up thing, and let no one tell you different.
Depression is not just feeling sad.
('It isn't even something — it's nothing. And you can't combat nothing. You can't fill it up. You can't cover it. It's just there, pulling the meaning out of everything.')
Depression is not something people make up to get attention or blame their failings on.
If you believe so, or if you pretend to have it to do so, I have something for you.
Depression is not something you can will, wish, or hope away.
('But people want to help. So they try harder to make you feel hopeful and positive about the situation. You explain it again, hoping they'll try a less hope-centric approach, but re-explaining your total inability to experience joy inevitably sounds kind of negative; like maybe you WANT to be depressed. The positivity starts coming out in a spray — a giant, desperate happiness sprinkler pointed directly at your face. '
Depression is not something that we should fear, make fun of, or have a stigma against.
But we as a society do, and 'That's what makes you hold it in and hide it. It's the stigma. So you hold it in and you hide it, and you hold it in and you hide it, and even though it's keeping you in bed every day and it's making your life feel empty no matter how much you try and fill it, you hide it, because the stigma in our society around depression is very real.'
Depression is not something. It is nothing.
Depression is different for everyone.
It exists in various stages, and everyone experiences it differently. That's why no one can say 'I understand completely' and not be lying. Not even from one depressive to another.
Depression lives in your mind, in your body.
It knows everything about you, and uses all of that knowledge against you.
Depression is widely misunderstood and pretty much not understandable, even by the people who are depressed.
'So when your spouse sees your actions and perceives them as a sign of you being sad, he is naturally going to assume that it should be easy to fix by simply doing something fun and chasing the sadness away. He is failing to realize that you cannot experience the sensation of "something fun", because the parts of you that are responsible for feeling that are "asleep". And when you tell him "this is not sadness, it is depression!", what he hears is "this is not sadness, it is sadness!", since the word is so widely misused. And then he does something that should make you feel better if you were just sad, but you don't, and he assumes that you simply refuse to feel better, because he can't experience what you are experiencing.'
Depression is war.
It is a one man struggle against what seems to be an infinite darkness. Leaves us exhausted, broken, changed, and sometimes dead.
Depression is your personal demon. Your worst nightmare, catered especially to you.
Depression isolates.
Not receptive. Sad. Negative. Empty. The depression drives everyone away, friends and family.
Depression condemns.
You can't finish your assignments. You don't show up or do enough at work. You can't even keep your house clean without losing your mind. You're a FAILURE.
Depression numbs.
'It affects the ability to think clearly, to feel anything, to ascribe value to your children, your lifelong passions, your relative good fortune. It scoops out your normal healthy ability to cope with bad days and bad news, and replaces it with an unrecognizable sludge that finds no pleasure, no delight, no point in anything outside of bed.'
Depression kills.
'Up to 15% of those who are clinically depressed die by suicide.'
'One person in the world dies by suicide every 40 seconds.'
Depression is a murderer. 'It is a slower way of being dead.'
And yet.
Depression is curable. It is treatable. Some people have to take meds forever. Some don't.
Depression, if overcome or beaten, makes us grow. 'and as much as I hate, as much as I hate some of the places, some of the parts of my life depression has dragged me down to, in a lot of ways I'm grateful for it. Because yeah, it's put me in the valleys, but only to show me there's peaks, and yeah it's dragged me through the dark but only to remind me there is light. My pain, more than anything in 19 years on this planet, has given me perspective, and my hurt, my hurt has forced me to have hope, have hope and to have faith, faith in myself, faith in others, faith that it can get better, that we can change this, that we can speak up and speak out and fight back against ignorance, fight back against intolerance, and more than anything, learn to love ourselves, learn to accept ourselves for who we are, the people we are, not the people the world wants us to be.'
Depression doesn't make you a weak person. Please, never, ever, EVER believe that, even if everything screams at you that it's true. You're ill. And anyone can get sick with depression. Even children.
Depression (probably) can make us stronger than before. Because you've done it. You've run on empty, you've faced your darkest fears and come out of it in relatively one piece. You've been able to live despite feeling nothing, feeling like nothing, feeling so much pain that you just want to lie down and not wake up forever. And that's a fucking miracle. I've known a lot of people (not personally, but still) who have come out to the other side, battle-worn and worse for wear but still alive. And they have triumphed. And they have thrived. And they have lived lives that are fulfilling and reach out to help those who are still fighting their battles. And I, I believe in them, even if I'm still wandering in my own bleak world.
I believe, that depression is something that everyone should know about, because knowledge is the first step. If I didn't know I had depression, I'd probably be suicidal by now. 'I'm lazy, slow, I can't do anything productive, I'm a waste of space. I don't deserve to live.' These are the thoughts I've had before, and now I can say to them, 'no, I'm depressed.' A close friend I confided in told me she had actually guessed that I had depression 3 years prior to my confession. I was shocked. And absolutely horrified, because I hope that if someone is depressed, someone can come over and tell them, 'Hey, you're not lazy, slow, or a waste of space. You're probably depressed. I heard it's a mental illness that's like a living hell. Let's look up about it, maybe see if we can do anything about it.' That this 'pathetic' being isn't you, it's what depression has made you out to be. Sure depressed people hide it, some hide it so well no one suspects a thing until they see on the news that person's jumped off a building. But that's the point. Fight the ignorance, fight the intolerance, and people might be able to speak out. That's what I think, and that's what I'm going to believe in.
http://www.nami.org/Template.cfm?Section=depression
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/depression-part-two.html
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23xtul/eli5_how_to_explain_depression_to_my_spouse_who/
http://www.reddit.com/r/MorbidReality/comments/23or37/heres_a_few_posts_to_rsuicidewatch_who_have_since/cgz8rs5
http://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_solomon_depression_the_secret_we_share/transcript?language=en
http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_breel_confessions_of_a_depressed_comic?language=en
http://www.thestar.com.my/Lifestyle/Health/2014/10/13/Suicide-kills-a-person-every-40-seconds-WHO-finds/
http://theovernight.donordrive.com/?fuseaction=cms.page&id=1034
http://www.allaboutdepression.com/gen_04.html
