Depression

Hi everyone, I was going to write a post about a Shoujo manga series for this week, but last night (as of writing this) Robin Williams died of suspected suicide. Even if that is not the case, it still led me to thinking about how people with Depression feel and how a person who brought joy to so many people could have taken his own life. I personally struggle with Severe Depression everyday, I’ve taken medicines on extremely high dosage levels to combat it before. Even with all the support out there just waiting for me to ask for help, I’ve still thought about suicide and how easy it would be to give up, multiple times.

When you are in that deep dark place you just want someone, you really don’t care who at that point, to reach out and offer you a helping hand. Lots of people don’t understand how debilitating it is to deal with Depression, I personally function at a level that is so far below the average person on a daily basis that I’ve had to reassess what I can do to be a productive member of society. My own family and myself thought I could function on a much higher level and when I encountered trouble I tried to fix it on my own, which I’m not able to do easily or well at all. It keeps piling up on you until it becomes a giant mountain that you carry on your shoulders, you see things in a darker tone before and every time you wake up you struggle to just open your eyes. It never really goes away, medicine can help you function a bit better, but it won’t make it go away. The only thing I’ve ever had completely remove all effects of Depression from my life is falling in love with someone else who makes you feel good about yourself. The time you spend with that person makes every day seem brighter and more alive than ever before and you no longer hear that inner voice of Depression telling you that you are a worthless person who should just give up and die.

Even then if you lose the ability to see that person due to whatever circumstances, like breaking up with them or they move away to a different country, the Depression will still be there and you’ll hear that voice again saying you are worthless. When your loved ones don’t understand how debilitating it is emotionally or physically to have to deal with that voice every day. When they see you just sitting around and doing nothing productive, they can and might try to get you to do something and do so in ways that aren’t possible for you at the time. But they need to understand that you aren’t at full capacity, and that your full capacity might not be at a level like they have, and are in a tough spot in life where you struggle to just get out of bed. It’s hard to tell loved ones who don’t understand what it is like, because words can’t ever really describe the depth of pain and agony you feel when you are dealing with Depression. You can try to write about it, like I am right now, and it may be easier that way, but it’s never going to be easy for you.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that when you have Depression you need to feel loved, you need to be hugged often and told you are worth something to someone who cares about you. You need to find a way to ignore that little voice in your head and keep on walking, even if it’s just tiny little steps, you’ll get to your goal eventually.  I hope that I’ll find someone who I can fall in love with who will make my world bright again, and every day I make little steps towards that goal. Even if those steps are just waking up and reading a book all day, it’s a still the closest thing to a victory over Depression I’ll probably ever find. You can’t ever win against Depression, you can only find something that lets you ignore it. For myself I’ll keep using whatever temporary stop gaps (like playing video games and reading books) I can find until I find someone else to fall in love with. I may not make much of myself in this life, but I’m still going to live it to my fullest degree I can.

For those of you who are reading this right now and are in the midst of crisis and are thinking that it might be easier to just give up please call a loved one and talk to them about it. If you can’t do that for whatever reason call the National suicide hotline at 1-800-273-8255 for the United States or check this list here at http://www.suicide.org/international-suicide-hotlines.html for those outside the United States.

Suicide will not solve all your problems and trust me, even if you haven’t fallen in love yet you will eventually find that person who makes everything seem alive again.