I have depression, and although I’ve never seriously attempted suicide, there have been points in my life when I have genuinely been afraid of myself.
Before I started taking medication, I used to go to sleep with images flashing before my eyes of me shooting myself, throwing myself out of a window, slitting my wrists, downing pills, jumping off cliffs, and putting a noose around my neck and kicking the chair away.
And although my rational side reassured me that I would never attempt these things, I worried when I walked down a street that I would just lose control, and step in front of a bus. I threw out all my paracetamol. Sometimes, I would stand in the kitchen, shaking and crying with fear, too afraid to pick up the knife to make myself a sandwich.
It all sounds ridiculously over-dramatic, I know, but depression is often a far more complex array of emotions than just feeling “sad”. Often it feels like you are drowning, and you're reaching out for someone to grasp onto, but there is no one there. It can leave you feeling isolated and alone, even if you're in a room full of people. And for me, the pain would often manifest itself physically; it would be like someone twisting a knife into my stomach. And all you can do is curl up into a ball, and scream, and cry until you eventually fall asleep.
The fear that the depression installed in me used to make me have panic attacks. I would hyperventilate to the point where I would start to black out.
And all this was very exhausting, both emotionally and physically. I became withdrawn, I lost all sense of self-worth and confidence. I became frustrated at myself, because I wasn’t able to function properly. I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning. My work began to suffer. I stopped being sociable. The smallest of things would upset me.
My sole focus in life was to survive, and keep my “insanity” hidden. Sometimes I would just shout at myself, which sounds cliched I know, but I was in a state of genuine confusion and denial. I didn't really know what was happening to me. I thought I was going mad, which was terrifying. I didn't want to admit I needed help, because that would make it real. And I didn’t know who to trust. I was scared that if people found out, I would have to leave university, and drop my history degree, which despite everything I still loved.
And even when eventually, after two years, I went to the doctor and was put on a course of psychotherapy and prescribed antidepressants, things didn’t immediately get better. In fact, they got worse. The antidepressant my doctor prescribed caused me to have what I called “episodes”, where I would become paralyzed, and then start jolting uncontrollably. The loss of physical control was terrifying. Then, one night at about 2am, I climbed out of a top floor window in my uni halls and was inches from jumping off.
After that, I went back to see the doctor, and he prescribed me a new type of antidepressant, and thus far I haven’t experienced any major side-effects.
And, with the help of my counselor, close friends, and family, I have gradually got better. I still have problems, I still have ups and downs. Sometimes I’m scared that the depression will return, and there is not a day that passes that I do not think about it. I will be on antidepressants for the foreseeable future - they give me a feeling of control over myself. Although they do make me feel quite emotionally numb – I feel incapable of expressing extreme happiness or sadness. They just keep me in a steady state of ok-ish-ness.
Sometimes, being depressed feels like there is a stranger in your body, who is possessing you. I’m not schizophrenic, but sometimes my irrational side takes over. And it tries to make me do things that I don’t really want to do.
Obviously, there are causes for all this, but I won’t go into that.
In recent years though, it feels like depression has become somewhat of a fashion accessory for those tragically cool artsy types. Sure, depression brings out emotions in us that are otherwise unimaginable, and this is possibly why many great artistic visionaries have suffered it. Although I’ve tried to explain what it feels like here, I don’t expect you to properly understand. And that’s ok.
But people who purposefully act depressed, so that they can seem all the more like these troubled geniuses, are devaluing it. They cause depression not to be taken as a serious medical illness with serious, possibly even fatal, implications. And rather than being treated as such, society disregards those who genuinely have depression as just pathetic, whining, attention-seeking losers.
The difference is that people who have depression have no control over their emotions, they can’t just “snap out of it”. I’ve been told to do this in the past, by a number of people, and it takes a great amount of patience to explain to them why that simply isn’t possible. So if you’re feeling a little sad about life one day, don’t just say “Ohhh, I’m just SO depressed”, just like it wouldn’t be acceptable for me to go around pretending I had cancer or something. (Of course, if you feel awful every day, go see a doctor.)
My intention here was not to whine about my life problems. In fact, I rather like the anonymity that this blog gives me, because it means I can express how I feel, without incurring any extra unwanted attention. Rather, I wanted to try and raise awareness of an illness that will affect one in four of us in our lives, and educate those who perhaps don't realise how serious it is.
There. First blog. Woo.
I promise, from now on in things will get a lot more cheery. (Obviously the first blog had to be a psycho babble for the sake of cliché. Because we all love a good ol’ cliché.)
Over ‘n’ out.
Oswald.
