Why are you depressed? And other terrible questions.

“It’s so difficult to describe depression to someone who’s never been there, because it’s not sadness.” — J.K Rowling

Imagine you’re forever cursed to walk through a Desert that supposedly has no end. It’s a dangerous Desert of course (if it isn’t then it wasn’t Hazel who made it up).

There are terrible beasts and people who think Poundo yam is just as good as pounded yam here and you constantly have to defend yourself against these creatures to stay alive. You woke up one day and found yourself on this journey and all you’ve done is ask questions that no one has given the right answers to.

Who put you here? Who controls this Desert? What comes after this? Will there be another journey? After this journey, will you go to the same place as the treacherous people who eat Avocado? Or will you go somewhere beautiful where you can finally rest? Is there even anywhere else to go?Are there other Deserts? Does this journey ever really end or do you just make some magical switch from one Desert to another? What exactly is the purpose of this fucking journey and why are some people given a fucking Desert kit including camels, food, water and even the camel’s food and water at the start of the journey when all some people are given is an empty plate and water bottle and are told to find their own food and water?

People tell you to go on, not give up and keep walking or riding your camel(whatever your fortune). They tell you that if you don’t give up or question anything about this Desert, you’ll find a little Oasis that you can call your own until it dries up or the Poundo yam people take it from you.

They tell you that this is the purpose of this journey. Then you start to wonder, if the purpose of finding an Oasis in this vast unending Desert is to sustain you and give you enough food and water to be comfortable on your journey and the purpose of being comfortable on your journey is to be able to keep going long enough to find an Oasis , aren’t you basically a Hamster in a huge fucking wheel? Aren’t you simply stuck in an infinite loop with enough distractions to make it seem like every day is different?

And so begins the existential crisis.

One day, you decide that you’ve had enough and can no longer go on so you sit in the sand and wait for the Poundo yam people to come along and end your journey for you. As people pass you by, they ask why you’ve stopped. They say that if you can figure out why you’ve stopped then maybe you’ll be able to continue.

How do you begin to explain your predicament to these people (who you think are either extremely smart or extremely stupid for not feeling the same way as you)? How do you say that stopping is the only way you can rebel against a system of things that you have no choice in or control over?

How? You simply don’t because not a lot of people will understand why when you don’t like that you’re in a bad spot, you stop moving instead of trying to get out of it because they don’t see the Desert as a loop at all and everything looks different to them. Among those who do, not a lot of people will understand why you can’t just ignore the loop and keep going like they do. Do you not want all the fucking Oases ahead of you????

I’ve suffered mild to severe depression at various points in my life and the question “why are you depressed?” made me even more depressed each time I was asked. I’m merely speculating (Because I don’t know what it feels like to never have been clinically depressed), but I think that when people ask why you’re depressed, they:

1. Expect to hear of certain singular events that caused you to become “sad” and that by saying stupid shit you’ve heard before like “you’ll be fine”, “just forget about what happened”, “leave it all in the past”, they have solved your problem and created a new happy beast.
2. Don’t actually care and just feel like they’d be horrible heartless friends for not at least asking why.
3. Asked because its only rational thinking to want to know the “why” when you already know the what, how, when and where as pertains to the current state of whoever you’re asking.
4. Are therapists and need to get their job done
5. Just don’t know what to do and ask in a genuine effort to understand what you’re going through so that they can try to help get you and themselves out of this “uncomfortable” situation.(I know most of you identified with only this option, lying asses lol)

To be fair, none of these are terrible reasons but what most of them have in common is that they do more for your comfort than for the comfort of the depressed individual.

Personally, I’d rather a person babbled on about their day or the weird video they saw on twitter or anything really. In that state, everything pretty much sounds the same except “why are you depressed”. The easiest answers to that question are “I don’t know”, “I can’t remember” and “Leave me the fuck alone”.

“If you know someone who’s depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn’t a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather.

Try to understand the blackness, lethargy, hopelessness, and loneliness they’re going through. Be there for them when they come through the other side. It’s hard to be a friend to someone who’s depressed, but it is one of the kindest, noblest, and best things you will ever do.” — Stephen Fry

P.s Stephen Fry’s a real G.