Depression is your friends telling you to smile more often

A grim look into the reality of depression—and an open offer for those who need support.

Let’s be honest, I have a fucked up chemical makeup. I was chosen by the big man upstairs to be given one of the rarest neurological illnesses that has ever existed (KLS), but that isn’t all. Unfortunately, depression runs deep on both sides of my family, so I also suffer from that as well. I wanted to share some thoughts from inside depression... I’m not suffering from it now but I was from January to June of this year (2018). It was easily the worst 4 months of my life. Here’s a look inside my brain to help you empathize when communicating with others with depression. The purpose of this post is to spread awareness and to help encourage others who have it, to talk about it freely. It’s also therapy for me.

• Depression is spending a Saturday circling your neighborhood block for 6 hours, driving holes into your flip-flops and blisters into your feet, because there’s nothing better to do
• Depression is staring at yourself in the mirror, imagining what you would look like at 500 pounds, and being okay with it.
• Depression is waking up every day, wondering if this is going to the last time you need to wake up.
• Depression is going to a baseball game with friends, and one of them tells you to smile more often.
• Depression is like normal life, except everything is your fault… everything, even when it rarely is.
• Depression is having no self-worth.
• Depression is driving for literally hours, simply to kill the time.
• Depression is when decision fatigue is crippling every relationship you have, including the one you have with yourself.
• Depression is doing a poor job at work, and betting that if the company fails, it will be all because of you. And assuming the city will shun you afterwards, for killing the company.
• Depression is when just waking up is the biggest struggle of your day.
• Depression is seeing a cop outside your apartment complex and driving away, only to come back a few hours later, because the cop is obviously waiting for you.
• Depression is taking 30 minutes to text your girlfriend a simple sentence, only because you think she’ll take it the wrong way.
• Depression is ignoring people when they talk about the future, because you are confident you won’t be present during it.
• Depression is wondering “What if I just killed myself” 10 times a day. Not actually going through with it (at least for me), but wondering too often for comfort…
• Depression is having two hundred “How was your day… good… how was your day… good” conversations a day.
• Depression is lying, a lot.
• Depression is not paying tickets or going to appointments, because what’s the point anymore?
• Depression is normal at the time… it’s impossible to detect depression within yourself when you’re in the midst of it… hence why, at the time, suicide seems like a viable option to so many.
• Depression is being locked inside a burning room with no smoke, when people only see the beautiful house outside, telling you to appreciate it more often.
• Depression is telling your mother on Mother’s day that everything’s fine with tears rolling down your cheeks, when in fact, nothing is fine.
• Depression is knowing that the only way to feel better is to either kill yourself or to face it, without knowing how… and sometimes, it’s hard to know which is the better option.

I have a lot going on in my head. You probably do too. Know, it’s okay to talk about it. You should talk about it. The more this conversation is put into the public, the better off we’ll be as a society.

Read this post about my neurological disorder, Kleine-Levin Syndrome