Depression

Depression

NOTE: This was ridiculously difficult for me to write. I wrote this months ago, and I took forever to decide whether or not I was going to post it. After talking to a friend about their depression, I decided that I needed to post this to explain to others that depression is real, difficult, and painful and people can live with it for their entire lives. This is just how depression has elected to manifest in my life. Others have different experiences.

There is a little voice in my head that talks all the time. It is me. It is the darker part of me that I absolutely hate. It is Doubt. It is Fear. It is Anger. It is all the things that society tells me are Wrong, Selfish, and Horrible. It lives there. It never goes away.

I will never be good enough. I will never make it. I will never sing that high, or that pretty, or the way they want it. I'm too fat. I'm not strong enough. No one will ever hire me looking like this. Why did you say that? It was stupid. People don't want to hear that kind of jabbering. Why can't I just shut my mouth? Why did I say that?! They are going to take it this way and I meant it that way. What if they think I'm stupid? Now they think I'm stupid. What am I going to do to fix it. I can't fix it. It's worthless. What if they think... I'm always doing this. Why can't I stop? Just shut up! Shut up! Shut UP! What if I sang it that way? Would they like it better? Is it too loud? I don't want people to think I'm trying to stand out. But this is as soft as I can go. Do it softer. Softer. SOFTER! Should I answer the question? I know the answer. But everyone else will probably be mad if I answer because I always answer and they might want to, but no one ever raises their hand. Should I answer? What if I'm never good enough? Why won't you leave me alone?! I just want to eat my damn food! Stop telling me I'm not getting enough protein. I'm getting enough damn protein. Oh, no. I didn't mean to yell. I don't want her to be mad at me. What can I do? There is nothing I can do. LEAVE ME ALONE! I just need to cool down, can't you see? This is why people don't like me. Why would anyone want to listen to me talk about Norse myths? Why didn't I just keep it to myself. I really like that dress. I wish I could fit into something like that. I don't have any self discipline. I am a failure. I just keep eating. Why? Why are they looking at me like that? Did I say something strange? What did I say? Was that strange? Did they understand what I meant? What if they think I meant this?! That's not what I meant. They must think I'm an idiot. Like when I made that comment at that competition three years ago. They must have thought I was an idiot too. OMG! Why did you just eat five potatoes?! And two packets of ramen. And two bags of popcorn. When are you going to stop? Why are you doing this! This is why you are never good enough! This is why you are alone and lonely and no one returns your calls and no one notices when you are not where you are supposed to be when you said you would be there. No one would miss you if you were gone. Really. They don't care about you. If they did, they would answer the phone.

This, dear readers, is depression.

I have been depressed for several years. I have been on and off medication, in and out of therapy, and in and out of school trying to deal with this.

The funny thing is, I am probably one of the happiest people you will ever meet. Really, I am generally happy and bubbly and laughing and smiling about 75% of the time. The other 25%, I am curled up in my bed, unable to sleep and talking myself down into a never ending spiral of self hate and loathing. Anxiety and depression go hand in hand for me. I'll take something trivial, an offhand comment I said to a friend, for example, and I'll think about it and analyze it and scrutinize it and put it under a microscope and worry about it until I feel sick. Now imagine doing that for everything action every day.

When I was at school, I would literally be up all night rehashing the day's missteps and badly spoken words. I would think about what others thought of everything I did. Nothing would get the litany to stop. And it wouldn't be just that day's occurrences. No, some nights I would spend lying awake, staring at the ceiling, thinking about things I said to people over a decade ago. Things I said or did in Kindergarten.

Things I wore, things I ate, how I did my hair, what perfume I wore, how many times I washed my face. It didn't matter. Nothing was ever right. Nothing was ever good enough.

It was really hard for me to accept that I have depression. To me, it felt like a character flaw, a failing, another thing that was WRONG with me. It was hard when I was surrounded by people who only saw the façade that I put up and didn't know me enough to dig any deeper. Behind that ever-smiling face and jovial personality is a tired, scared, anxious little girl who doesn't know what she wants to do with her life and questions her every move. Add that to the conversations with people who tell you that they don't believe ADD or Depression exists? You end up feeling unknowingly ostracized and isolated from the others around you. It doesn't help that your political and religious views are constantly under attack by those around you, or the feeling of nausea you get whenever you turn on the news just won't go away. The few precious hours of sleep you get are tortured by nightmares and the feeling of being watched constantly follows you around.

I had a panic attack in class once. I failed a test because I made one mistake. One. I miss-labeled a matrix on a music theory test. It messed up two whole pages of the test and I failed because of it. My heart started to race. I couldn't hear anything around me. My vision started to fade and zoom in on the papers in front of me. I was about to cry. I left. I walked out of class. I walked to my practice room, shut off the lights, locked the door and hid under the piano and cried. I missed the entire class. A friend came looking for me and sat with me for a while and I finally managed to breathe like a normal human being. If she hadn't come looking for me, I would have gotten in my car and driven the 10.5 hours home, where I feel safe.

This is not normal, people. I can't tell you how many people I know have had breakdowns in the past few years. You can't think like this all the time. It catches up to you. Maybe it isn't about singing. Maybe it is about your grades, or your weight, or the expectations placed upon you to succeed. Whatever it is, you can't put yourself down like this all the time. You can't let others get inside your head either.

A year ago, I was depressed, exhausted, paranoid, and constantly crying or on the verge of tears. Now, after a year of therapy, forcing myself to get up and actually do something, and making decisions in my life, I can look back and see what I mess I was. That giant mess at the top of the page, do I still think like that? Not as much as I used to, but yes. It is hard to turn off the self critical voice. Without my friends, I probably would still be a miserable wreck. I would have graduated, maybe, I would have pushed myself until I did it all, but I would have been miserable. I would have crashed and burned in a conflagration so huge, it would have taken me years to recover.

As it is, I am better. I'm not 100%, not even 90% but so much better than I was. Everyday I get out of bed and thank God that I am alive. I might be grumpy or tired or angry, but those feelings fade and contentment takes their place. I enjoy cooking again. Singing is no longer a chore, but a joy. I am no longer the wrung out, despondent shell of myself that I was a year ago. I'm making progress.

 Depression is serious. It is invisible and impossible to fight by yourself. So if your friend reaches out to you, answer. They really do need you.