Depression Is Easy; Waking up From It Though.
Sharing the hardest part of my depression journey and some of my strategies for the lowest point.
Wakey Wakey
Imagine waking up in a post-apocalyptic scenario. You stand in the city you grew up in; you know the city by heart, once was full of life, people, and colors. Except now all the windows are smashed, buildings run down, and some on fire. There are no people around, and all the trees and plants are dying.
You don’t know, or care much, about how this happened. But you know these three things for a fact: There is no way to live here like this, it needs to be fixed, and you need to do the fixing.
But there’s just no way. No way one person could ever fix all this. You wouldn’t even know where to start, it’s a mess, and some of these fires are even still raging on.
You feel overwhelmed, desperate, and fucking terrified.
Well, it’s a kind of a theatrical version of how I felt every time I “woke” up from my depression. You know, that moment where you feel ‘OK’.
I looked around my life and saw only pain, loss, relationship in crumbles, no colors, no joy, and no sign of beauty or hope.
It Gets Darker
This is the part where the thought of ending it all seems tempting. Like the logical step to take; with the city that burned to the ground — you’d first try to flee it before you started any rebuilding efforts. Most terrifyingly, though, ending it brings a shit ton of relief; it feels liberating.
You are standing there in the middle of bad choices and toxic habits and relationships. Just on your way to get a chocolate cake to feel 3% better.
What the hell now? The terror.
The Harderst Part
When I think back to the time of being depressed, the vast majority of it wasn’t even that bad. The depression doesn’t let you do much of anything, but it does take some care of you. It makes sure you‘re comfortable and safe. You get your sweets, movies, and naps, and you love these things. Well, ‘love’.
But when you ‘wake up’, you see the burning remains of your relationships, interestest, and your once glowing skin.
And you know this is no way to live your life and you and only you can change it. That gets unbearable.
And that’s when you don’t want to go on anymore. Not back to the comfortable part; because that’s not something you can do anymore. And not to the rebuilding part, because there’s no strength left.
And so there is no place to go.
And there’s the panic, the terror.
‘I don’t want to die;’ I’m crying to myself a lot of times, ‘but I do’.
In my opinion, this is the most dangerous, destructive, and painful part of living a life with depression. This state of mind is never staying for long, if only just for the reason that it is exhausting. Soon you either go back or start rebuilding efforts.
To Rise and Shine
The road to fight and win your life back is going to be different for everyone, but I believe it depends a lot on how you approach this particular moment of despair. The strategies you develop over time to push through more quickly each time; until you won’t come back at all.
My strategies vary from:
- affirmations on hope, love, and kindness
- to ‘shut up and go to work’
- and running,
- or having a cold shower.
I find it best to have multitudes of these strategies readily available because the depression is very innovative in finding excuses not to do the things you know will make you feel good.
When it hits really bad, I know there’s no way I will have the capacity to go running or take a cold shower. I might even be too far gone for any affirmations (which can feel downright revolting at that state).
What can help at this moment is for example a Spotify playlist I named ‘first aid’. There I’ve compiled songs that never fail to bring a smile on my face, to get me to a state where all the other protocols are available to me.
Life is never going to be ‘happily ever after’ it will always be ‘happily sometimes, miserably other times, and always trying, fighting, and biting for what you hold dear’. Once I accepted that, it became obvious that it IS possible to learn from every one of these experiences and navigate this.
It’s not that you’re failing life when you’re miserable, you’re just living it.
In either case, it feels better to be succeeding. So what are we going to do about that today? ❤
