What is depression

Depression, like many other disease processes, isn’t a surprise. You don’t just suddenly wake up one day feeling as though you would rather be dead than have to face 24 more hours on this earth. It’s more of an insidious onset, like the slow building up of your own landfill of rubbish emotions. It may start off with small things: someone not picking you up, being let down at school, your first minor heart break. But then larger and larger events add to it – moving house, job loss, illness. Until in due course you are burying your emotions from the death of a grandparent or divorce in this landfill site. And like a landfill site you can only quell so much until eventually it all comes spilling down on top of you; threatening to suffocate you with the stench of pain. What does it feel like until this point, until the world comes crashing down around you?

Depression is a disease of insight. People with depression aren’t mentally retarded and they usually know very well that their low mood, lack of activity and suicidal thoughts are not ‘normal’. And it is this insight, from which stems the desire to control their low feelings and mood, that only serves to exacerbate the situation. With every attempt at ‘making your self feel better’, ‘perking up, or ‘just shaking yourself out of it’ comes the realization that nothing helps and that maybe you are just destined to be like this. With all of the generic responses from friends or professionals who have no idea what to say to help you feel more and more alone, everyone thinks you should just be able to ‘snap out of it’ so why cant you?

Depression is insensate. Experiencing the world with depression is like feeling everything through a condom: you know what it should feel like, what you want it to feel like and even what other people expect you to feel. But you can’t feel that. It’s not a conscious decision or even a choice, you are reaching out to try and caress life but every time you do there is an almost tangible barrier between you and the world you used to know. And when you come back from trying to face this you are left with a foul residue on your hands as a reminder of how you failed.

As a measure to try and feel something, anything goddamn it, before you entirely sink into oblivion, you may try more and more intense activities.  There is a reason why alcoholism and substance abuse is more common in those with depression, some argue it is cause but in actual fact may be effect. When the world around you is bland anything to spice it up seems feasible.

Depression is not linear. Depression is a disease of peaks and troughs, no two days are the same even if the events are exact mirrors of each other. One day you sink so low you feel you must have hit bottom now but the next month you find yourself smiling at small things. Just as suddenly you can find yourself climbing a hill you could have sworn you’d mounted before.

Depression is not a disease of logic. When you are feeling low it would seem logical that you would do the things you enjoy, hell surely you should do them more! Yet the activities and hobbies that bring you happiness are the first things that exit form your world. Is it because these things can no longer bring you the joy you once felt doing them so instead of looking internally you blame then external, it must be the tutors/trainer/employers/coaches fault. Or is it that because with every increasing ounce of motivation it takes to accomplish anything tasks deemed more important are prioritized ahead of enjoyment.

Depression is not a synonym for laziness.  People with depression describe it being hard to even get out of bed, they may find that facing a telephone call about the bills seems so daunting as to be accomplishable or that the bin bags pile up in the house as even the small task of hygiene requires just too much. After all if you only have a finite amount of energy surely you should conserve it for those life-necessary tasks like feeding yourself and washing yourself and talking to other people. Yet as time passes things that once seemed necessary to life diminish until the basics become the hardest.

Depression is not a disease that facilities sociability. Other people, by virtue of their emotions and all those feelings they salivate, become unbearable as a juxtaposition to your numb bubble. Or they become dissuaded from your personality by your periods of despondency and your apparent inability to react to anything how they would expect. They become sick of your lack of, well, you. Eventually, no matter how good a friend you think they are, they become sick of you. By fault or by choice eventually depression is an isolation bay inhabited just by you and your ruminating thoughts.

Whatever depression is or isn’t it is not a choice. Nor is it a stigma. No more than diabetes or asthma or cancer. Depression is an illness that many people try to cope with alone and misunderstood. Nobody wants to be ill so try and show a little patience even if you lack understanding.