Depression: It Is What It Is...

I've been wanting to write this for a while. Sometimes I get the feeling that people don't understand what it is to be depressed. I can empathise. It's a strange disease, one which is often misrepresented, one which people don't like to talk about and one which has so many myths associated with it.

I want to give my take on it.


When it's bad, it's bad. But throughout it all I am forever grateful for my life. Depression doesn't mean that I walk around in a permanent funk. I'm not an emo. I don't think the world is going to end, or that everything is bad and going to turn out wrong. I often think that my life at that moment is bad. At that particular moment, in those hours when all I can do is beg for it to end. When it's really bad I find it hard to believe that it will better, even though I know it will. But I'm never not grateful. I have had a wonderful life. I've had so many opportunities and I am blessed. I've never doubted that. I'll never doubt that. In a way knowing that makes it harder, because I feel guilty for feeling the way I do given the life that I've had.

But it is what it is.

Depression isn't just something you can shake yourself out of. I wish it was. I hate the person that I've become, and the way which I collapse and fall. I want nothing more than to have a switch, or a button, or something, anything that I could do to turn it all off. To push away the black and be "normal" again, whatever normal is. But I can't. That's not what it's like. And as hard as it is to admit, I wouldn't be me without all the darkness, and everything associated with the depression which I've been through.

Depression doesn't mean that I'm sad. Again, I'm not an emo. Yeah, I'm sad, but I'm not. I know that doesn't make sense, and I haven't managed to find a way to express it properly. It's like...it's like everything has been tainted black, like I'm seeing the world through an old style camera. Like there's a man holding a net over my head through which I can see the sun, and appreciate the sun, but the light of the sun won't pass the mesh of the net. It just...hangs there. And without the sun all the bad things inside which have taken root grow, and out of it comes this horrific beast which spills a darkness toxin, a dark-toxin into my blood...it sounds stupid. That metaphor sounds stupid. There aren't words to properly express what it is I'm trying to say. A better writer could. Better writers have. But for me...depression is a darkness which stops me from feeling.

It is what it is.

There isn't a reason I feel what I do. Yeah, there have been events in my past which may or may not have precipitated what I feel now. And yeah, sometimes things can happen in my day to day life which may push me into that direction and trigger a response. But subconsciously I know that all those things are trivial, that they shouldn't make me feel that way, that they don't deserve this response. It isn't even subconscious. It's a conscious thought. But inside, deep inside, something happens and chemicals start flowing and before long I'm drowning. And when that happens it's so, so hard to pull myself out. I can be perfectly at peace with a triggering event, I can have dealt (countless times) with the things in my past but I can't stop the dark. When it comes it's...the Greek army marching on Troy. The Romans attacking the Celts. Cancer once it's got into the bloodstream. Despite your defences it still comes.

It is what it is.

Somebody once tweeted and said, "Have you ever been happy?" Yes. Of course. You should see me on a normal day. I'm lovely :p I'm a strong, independent young lady who is great in a crisis and deals well with other people's problems (and even her own problems, believe it or not) and knows how to work through things so they become sorted out. I laugh. Loudly and often. I grin like a little child. My life makes me smile. I'm happy. And yet.

And yet.

It is what it is.

I know this may not make sense. It doesn't even make sense to me. But when people say "just be happy" or "just be grateful" or "be more positive" - all of which have been said to me - they don't mean anything because it isn't like that. It has never been like that.

I'm sorry.

And so a quote, from JK Rowling. I came across this recently and it goes a long way to explaining what it is I've been trying to convey:

“Depression is the most unpleasant thing I have ever experienced. . . . It is that absence of being able to envisage that you will ever be cheerful again. The absence of hope. That very deadened feeling, which is so very different from feeling sad. Sad hurts but it's a healthy feeling. It is a necessary thing to feel. Depression is very different.”

Toodles, 

Lexie