Intro to Depression

Depression is raw. That’s one word I keep coming back to when talking about depression.

I’m calling this “Intro To Depression” because, well, this is my first post exclusively about depression and I want to go in on the ground floor, for anyone out there who hasn’t had first-or-second hand experience with depression.

The most important thing is that depression isn’t sadness. Sadness, pain, grief… all of these emotions would be a dream come true to people suffering depression. When depression hits, any ability to feel emotion is stripped from you like a particularly bleak apple peel.

I’ve only ever been able to describe depression in two ways, and even then it doesn’t come close to what it is to live with it daily. It comes with instructions on how to feel a moment of what depression feels like. It’s like a cool science experiment but instead of a fizzing beaker, you end up with a vague sense that nothing matters.

First; wait until night. It has to be a clear night so that you can see the stars. Look up into the stars and take in the beauty. Then think about it. Think about how each of those stars is the size of the sun or more, how each could have multiple plants circling it, how those stars are dead and have been for years, how unknowable the universe is. Imagine how you are a grain of sand in comparison to…well…the galaxy. That feeling (though I’m hesitant to call it a feeling) that you are so small and so insignificant. That’s depression.

Second; experience grief. Not the parts where you cry or scream or blame the world or blame yourself. But experience that moment just after you find out. Whether you’re told a family member has died, or the person you love is dating someone else. It’s that moment just after you’ve been told when your heart sinks and you just feel nothing. For just a moment you’re utterly weightless, and infinitely heavy at the same time. That’s depression.

But for each of these “feelings”, they last only a moment. Depression is that… but that “feeling” never ends.

Let’s get back to where this started; my thought that “depression is raw”.

Before I knew about and experienced depression, I imagined that a depressed person was someone whose life wasn’t going well. I imagined them sitting around and crying about it and maybe one day saying “lol time to die lol”.

After learning and experiencing depression I thought of depression as a life without tears because it’s a life without feeling.

But one thing that always troubled me was the crying. Why am I crying during depression if I’m not sad? Surely tears equals some sort of emotion running through you? Yay! Problem solved! Depression over and feelings found! Good job, team!

What I’ve come up with is my own brand of depression pseudo science.

You have feelings — better described as your emotions; happiness, sadness, anger. These are stripped from you when you have depression.

Then you have things you feel; your nervous system; pain, suspicion and fear. Fear is why people with depression cry.

Myself — and friends that have come to me during times of depression — break down into hysterical sobs. Not because they’re sad about being depressed. But because they’re afraid. Terrified.

Believe me when I say that it is the most terrifying experience to question every waking second if you are human. Because what is being a human if not to feel emotions?

This is what I mean when I say depression is raw. Depression leaves you bare. It leaves you as nothing but A Human Being. You have a body. You have a brain. You have experiences. But you feel nothing about any of them. That blank “feeling” will be the same whether you’re staring at a white wall, or at your own wedding. You have no substance. Nothing that makes a human human.

Living with depression strips everything away. There is no meaning to life. Because you’re not living. You’re existing. The two are so different it scares me.

Unsurprisingly, this was a fairly depressing post. I’m in a good headspace right now, so I’m going to go away and have a nice cup of tea and watch some dumb shit on YouTube. Because that’s what makes me happy.

Right now, at this moment, I’m living. Not just existing.

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Originally published at moreimpossiblegirl.wordpress.com on November 1, 2015.