What (I Think) Depression Feels Like

Alexandra Yeung
Jul 25, 2017 · 4 min read
Lonely Road Theme from PlayStation

I have never been formally diagnosed with depression or anxiety. I have seen a social worker exactly once during the school year because exam season hit particularly hard last December, and I could tell I wasn’t myself the weeks leading up to finals. A short discussion, alongside snacks and worthwhile tips about managing stress, pretty much sums up my experience with a professional who understands mental health and illness. I know I am also a student who happened to be balancing academics, extracurriculars, and a life outside of school at the time; it could have just been a perfect storm, one acute episode. I’m a sensitive kid, I know that.

So it’s “I think”, because I have no idea what really constitutes a sign, a symptom, and what doesn’t fit. I simply don’t know, even though I am an advocate for mental health and its visibility. Perhaps it’s because depression manifests itself in different ways for each person, making it difficult for individuals to pin down, and even more difficult for a professional who’s trained to be able to tell, but sometimes unintentionally misses it altogether.

I have always struggled with my mental health; I just could never quite label it, and never had the opportunity to meet with somebody who could help distinguish it a little more. But I’m writing this because of an experience I had recently that was worse than anything I’ve experienced before. And it feels important enough to share, because 1. I know now I’m not the only one who struggles this way, 2. it scares me, and 3. if there’s more people who have felt this way/do feel this way, then we need to talk about it.

This is what I think depression feels like:

  1. It feels like drowning, like a metaphorical drowning-in-hindsight. I couldn’t (and still can’t) recall some of the conversations I had with people that I should still remember. As in, there’s something like audio when I reach for the memories, but it’s fuzzy; and the visuals: people, places, are blurry too.
  2. There was a little (again, metaphorical, or else this would be a very different article) voice in my head that wouldn’t shut up, telling me how I guilty I should feel about things I’ve done in the past, mistakes I’ve made, people I’ve disappointed- the list can go on for weeks. And trust me, I felt all the guilt. Nothing was wrong, so that made me feel worse, because I know people endure suffering far, far beyond what I was simply feeling, in my mind. It was mentally draining just to get my mind to think about something else.
  3. When I was thinking about other things, the little voice just kept going in the back of my head, replaying itself over and over- until it was the centre of attention again.
  4. Memories are hazy and blend into one long strip of time.
  5. There was a lot of crying.
  6. There was some misdirected anger.
  7. It was difficult to get out of bed. Then, it was difficult to get out of the car.
  8. I didn’t want to talk to people about it at all.
  9. I was very good at pretending.
  10. There was fear. Fear of people, fear of interactions going wrong, fear of disappointing others and myself, fear of failure. I didn’t talk to people much at all during this time, and if I did, I overcompensated with friendliness because I felt like I was watching myself interact with somebody. I wasn’t really ‘there’.
  11. I worried, a lot.
  12. It feels like hopelessness. I felt like I was ‘slipping’. I was slipping away from reality and the present, there is no doubt about that, but I also felt like I was slipping away from some ledge my fingers were holding on to; as though I had been holding on for so long and I was getting tired and wanted to let go. (This was the scariest part of the whole thing).
  13. I’m a person of faith, so I pretty much spent most of this experience questioning my existence, which I reckon is probably normal, but then I also started to question whether I should exist at all. I have a feeling this was a direct result of the guilt and the little voice, because I truly believed that the people around me would be better off without me.
  14. Chester’s passing made sense to me.

That’s it. That is all I can recall right now about my experience with what I think depression feels like. Again, I share this in part because I want to remember what it felt like; when it comes again, at least I can be in perspective faster to catch it. I also want people to know they’re not alone in the struggle, for those who do, and for those who don’t, to see why we need to have these conversations, no matter how uncomfortable.

I realize I’m one of the lucky ones, because somewhere in the nothingness, I could grasp a tether of faith, music, and the friends and family who have no idea their messages brought me back, simply because they blatantly proved how wrong my rationalizations were about my life’s worth. I just want someone to have that sliver of hope too, because that’s all it takes to change the course of someone’s trajectory.

This is my experience. Regardless of whether it’s depression, or something else, it doesn’t matter. It is what it is, and if it prevents people from living life well, or living at all, then we have an obligation to do something about it.

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