Time for another weekly blog entry, a month after the last one. Maybe I should write about procrastination instead…
Anyway, this time I’m going to talk about Depression and
specifically how it’s affected me. What I'm talking about here specifically is medically confirmed depression. Not saying you're depressed because you stubbed your toe, or you horse didn't win, or the shop sold out of your favourite shoes.
Yesterday was ‘World Mental Health’ day. To the honest
campaigners it is an annual day in which to raise awareness and show support
for various mental health issues. Bloggers, Vloggers, and social media
communities all come together to generate some much needed ‘togetherness’. To
the cynic, it’s a day in which a lot of talk happens, a lot of soundbites are
pushed by “charities” looking to line their pockets, a few photo opportunities
for celebrities and the Royals and not a great deal changing in the world of
mental health.
I try to sit on the fence when it comes to things like
this, although I strongly believe if one single person in the world (at least)
has seen the campaign hashtag and has reached out for help then it’s all
worthwhile. It has given me the kick up the arse to write something down
anyway, so I take that as a good thing.
So why the title? Why ‘depression is everything’? Simply,
because it is.
To suffer from one or several mental health issues is in my
personal experience (yours my differ) is to also suffer from depression.
For me it feels like a road network.
Depression is in the middle of it all swirling round like a
roundabout, permanently connected to PTSD, Bipolar, Anxiety, Dissociation,
Derealisation, Stress, Insomnia, Anger, Self Destruction, Shame, Isolation. All symptoms I've suffered/suffer from.
Whenever I’ve had a bout of one of the above it has both
amplified the depression and been amplified by it. That’s not to say it is
necessarily the most serious or dangerous or frightening (imagine looking in
the mirror and not knowing who the fuck is looking back at you, there is
genuinely very little as scary as that) of those symptoms but it is in my
opinion the most far reaching one, that binds all of the rest together.
I have spent a lot of time fighting those assorted issues
back and forth, and at this point in time I’m winning. I’ve got coping
mechanisms, mental safe places, notes, instructions and so on to deal with the
aforementioned issues but depression has always been that one that creeps up unexpectedly and more often than the others.
That is what I mean by ‘Depression is Everything’.
For a long time I spent days in bits begging for someone,
anyone to bring me a magic pill to cure it. I imagined the scene in Fight Club
where Ed Norton shoots out a certain part of his brain and it cures him of his ailment. I wondered if that would work for me. Or if a doctor somewhere
could part of my body or brain or something to basically remove the depression
as if it was a real, physical thing like a cancer. The “black dog” analogy is
also incredibly accurate. I could almost see the virus like depression weaving its way around my
circulatory system like a brightly coloured alien blood, luminous green. Poisonous,
infecting everything. I needed to get it out of me, I needed to cure it and
everything else would be cured. This in turn led to self destructive thoughts and actions as detailed on a previous post.
But there is no cure, that’s the reality of it.
There is managing, coping, getting by. Having off days,
having absolutely fucking shit days, and having days where it stays dormant.
I’ve found that those good days become more often as time
goes on and the terrible days tend to be less frequent.
Depression, for me, tends to come in waves. I can feel it
starting. Too little sleep, annoyances at work. Triggers, like seeing certain
things on the news. It whispers to you when you're tired or low or down or annoyed. It says things like "your life is fucked mate", "you'll never own that/do that/go there/have that", "what's the point, just give up", "who cares, you don't care, nobody cares", "you'll never get out of this mess, your stuck" and so on.
The cloud smothers me, overwhelms me and I can physically feel the weight of it getting heavier and heavier and the fog getting thicker and thicker. I end up being drained, low and devoid of interest in doing anything. My spirits drop, I go into my shell and become pretty much a shadow. It is energy draining just being clinically depressed. Jobs get left, hobbies get forgotten about, friends get ignored, social events pass you by.
It sounds like a massively complicated turn of events but it can (and often does) happen in minutes, particularly if it catches me off guard. I then revert back to desperately looking for a cure.
Again, to reiterate, I do not believe there is a cure.
At least I don't believe there is either a medical cure or non medical permanent cure.
Instead it's a case of managing it, acknowledging it and also talking about it, and living your life. It tricks you into thinking you are the only person in the world going through what you are going through, so being open and realising that isn't true is a hugely positive step. Counseling helps enormously too. It helps (with a good counselor at least) to develop ways of coping and keeping that black dog at bay. One thing I would definitely say is that social media amplifies the risk of depression ten fold in my opinion. We are so interconnected now to every horror, atrocity, fuck up and so on that happens in the world that it's very easy to feel low after a quick scroll through social media. So try to avoid that if you feel depression creeping up.
Remember this next time you struggle with depression, or someone takes the brave step of opening up to you about it: depression whispers to you that your life right now is the worst it will ever be. That nothing has ever been as bad as it is in this moment, and that your life will never get better.
The cloud will go, you'll wake up in the morning and realise that what it's told you is bullshit. You WILL have better days, you WILL have worse days.
Depression lies to you. Depression itself is a lie.
Remember that, and over time it will become more much manageable and the black dog won't come calling as often.
