Living with depression

The recent, tragic passing of Robin Williams, whose protrayal of John Keating in "Dead Poets Society" is partly responsible for me becoming a writer, has made me painfully aware about many misconceptions that still exist, when it comes to depression. So I have decided to write about my personal experience in an attempt to help people understand this disease. 

I am not a psychologist, so I won't be throwing around medical terms but I have been diagnosed on three separate occasions with depression. I am presently going through my second cycle of therapy and have been on three different medications (Thank god, I am managing without since 2011!). 

Why am I sharing this with you? Because I think it is time. Not only for me but for everybody. Depression is sadly a common thing and most people don't dare speaking about it and therefore are not getting the help they need. 

I was thinking of how I could explain to a person whom has never suffered from depression how this feels, because depression is so much more then "being sad". So I came up with the following exercise: 

First I want you to think of the state you are e.g. on a sunday morning. You get up, feel relaxed, just have a shower and do some small errands, nothing out of the ordinary. Basically the state, were you are in a balanced mood, neither sad nor happy, neither mad nor frustrated. I would like to call this "neutral mood". 

Then I want you to think of the worst moment of your life. It doesn't matter if it was after a bad break-up, loosing a loved one or loosing your job. I mean one of those moments, where you wouldn't eat, shower or if it were up to you even leave the bed. I know this is hard, but I want you to remember that feeling, in every detail. I want you to remember how hard it was to do even the simplest tasks. 

Now I want you to imagine how it feels, to take this feeling and think of it as your "neutral mood". Imagine when you wake up in the morning you feel this numbing emotional pain, although nothing has happened yet in your day. Besides all this, there is no rational reason, for feeling like this and you are very well aware of that. You know that there is no sense to you feeling like this, but you cannot help it. So on top of this feeling, you start being mad at yourself and frustrated because you feel stupid, for being so upset without any apparant reason. Imagine this going on for months, sometimes even years. I think this gives you an idea about what depression really means. 

People who have never gone through depression don't understand the strength it takes to even do the smallest things, like getting up in the morning or leaving the house. 

Most people think that depressed people are weak, when in reality they are strong because living with this disease is an effort beyond words especially if you are functioning, which means that you continue to do your job and duties, without allowing the depression take over. 

When I was going through my worst depression, to the outside world I was in the best moment of my life. I was successful in my job and managed to always smile. People in fact thought I was an extremely happy person. 

The problem is that in today's society people think of you as a weakling if you admit to depression, so you do everything to hide it and if you do it for years, you get good at hiding it and therefore you don't talk about it and nobody suspects it. 

I remember when I first talked about it to a person, he laughed and basically said: "Depressed? You? Nice joke!" We really need to listen to people again and also watch them. Show them how much you actually care. 

Something that makes living with depression or better dealing with it even more difficult is that constantly being upset and angry at yourself starts messing with your view of the world. You become sort of paranoid and even start doubting the affection of family and friends. You often think, that their affection is more like masked pity. In a weird sense it makes sense to yourself, because you feel like a fool, after all you are upset for months without any  "real" reason. That is what makes it a disease and not just bad mood. Bad mood has a reason, while depression has not. It is a flaw in the system if you want to put it like that. 

If things get worse then a lot of people start becoming suicidal. It starts sneaky, that sort of thought were you think before going to bed: Maybe if I am lucky, I won't wake tomorrow. 

This is the point, where this disease starts getting really dangerous. If you ever have felt like this:

Please, look for help!

Talk to someone close to you and tell them how you feel. Ask for help and don't allow the most precious thing you have, your life, to be ruined by a flaw in your system. This is a disease! You haven't done anything wrong and there are people than can help you!

Suicide isn't a solution. Because life isn't a computer game, where you can start from the beginning (At least as far as we know!). Please seek help, because there is and maybe in your darkest hours, it will help you to think of all the things you'd miss if all was to end at that moment: 

The first female US president, the ending of "Game of Thrones" (We all want to know about Jon Snow's true heritage, right?), the smile of your first grand child, the next sunrise, the first man on Mars, the next sort of Oreo cookies, the kiss from someone you truely love and who loves you back.... 

There are many beautiful things ahead of you, don't miss out on them!

Writing this, I have to admit, took an incredible effort. I had to revisit the darkest times in my life and this has affected me. It took me several days to write this post. Still, I don't regret writing this, because I think depressions are an important topic we all need to talk about. It might have been caused by modern society, but this doesn't make it any less real. 

I hope this helps non-afflicted people to better understand people who suffer from this illness.