Timi Leppänen
Aug 24, 2017 · 3 min read

So many people have the misconception that deeply depressed people just need to hear about the choice that is happiness, get some self-help advice, maybe therapy at most and they’ll somehow suddenly have an Eureka moment, “get over it” and start getting better.

I’ve been some degree of depressed for as long as I can remember. I live in very acceptable conditions. Very good if you consider how much effort I put into sustaining them. Amazing if you consider the whole population of the world. I know more or less exactly what’s ‘wrong’ with me and my life. It’s not much. It’d be quite easy to ‘fix’ to achieve happiness if I chose happiness.

But my whole being resists happiness so damn hard. It’s not who I am. I am depression. I know that’s stupid. I know that’s not a realistic thing to base your identity on. But it simply has stuck. Happiness makes me sick. People who appreciate who I am and care about me make me unhappy and anxious and I feel like pushing them away as fast as possible.

I’ve attempted suicide before. Jumped out of a window, probably saved my life because of last second guilt over harming the people who care about me and fear that caused me to grasp on something to slow down my fall. That was back when I was struggling with depression and grieving over loss. These days I’ve accepted and befriended depression instead. It eats away at my sadness and grief just as much as my happiness and contentment. Silent acceptance was what I considered the most graceful way of losing my battle against depression.

Sorry this became so much more about my life than your story. I guess I’m trying to say I think I can empathize with you. And that your article made me feel… good? In a way, at least.

I know it’s easy to push people away. Many of us don’t want to be a bother or we feel like our “drama” is going to cause people to think less of us if we live with total transparency. Let that go!

This is something I get behind so much. Unless there’s a mutual agreement of “We both want any interaction between us to be as shallow as possible and never want it to change”, you should share your ‘drama.’ It’s a therapeutic experience that feels good to you and it’ll most likely make the people you’re sharing with feel good about being able to help (not actively help necessarily, but rather help by just “giving a fuck” as you put it) and will most likely improve your relationship.

Now I feel like I’m just reacting for the sake of reacting. But I’ll leave the last paragraph in anyway. It’s what felt right to type at the moment and I’m going to treat this like a real conversation where there’s no backspace or undoes.

Anyway, thank you for your article. It emphasized more on some of points I was happy to see in the Joel Leon’s piece that got your story out (followed you from the top comment there.) Your writing is a bit raw and very powerful, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

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Timi Leppänen

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One day I’ll build up the courage to write a story… All my responses are based on my experiences, life views and opinions. They aren’t ‘correct’ nor ‘incorrect’

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