Depression aka A little bit about myself
Some of you might have noticed that it has been quite quiet in this part of the woods. I have indeed not blogged much and the things I did blog about were posts I wrote a while ago. I have used many exciting and interesting products recently and even started working on a few longer non review posts.
I just haven't been able to either finish them or get started in the first place.
As some of you may or may not know, I am depressed. I have been for most of the past 15 years of my life. On top of depression I have a myriad of other psychological differences that I might want to write about in the future.
I usually never talk about my mental state and to be honest most of the people I know probably have no idea about my depression and its buddies. Maybe they picked up on it or they were witness to one of the few occasions I actually did mention it in passing.
I am quite reserved and I don't like to talk about myself to most people. After Johnny took the plunge and talked about his mental states, I noticed that sharing it publicly is not the end of the world and that people might actually not grab the torches and pitchforks to run you out of town.
Since then, I have been toying with the idea of talking about my own experiences.
After all it makes me feel good when I read about the struggles other people went through online (or in person of course). It is comforting that I am not the only one in the world going through the same things. Especially after the overwhelming positive feedback we received after Johnnys first post on the subject, I am encourage to write more about it myself.
Even though I have been feeling much better in the past few months, due to a change in diet, finding a therapist, starting to work out and finally beating insomnia, I still get back into slumps.
I suppose I am in one of those at the moment. It is hard enough to function on a daily basis so I need most of my energy to just do things like feeding myself, procuring such foods and leaving the house to do errands and such. I use up all my strength to leave the bed and be able to do those things without breaking down midway through. Sometimes I have enough energy to write, take photos and other blog related activities. Sometimes I have enough energy to do social media. Social media is actually the hardest thing for me, that is the reason why my Twitter and Facebook pages have a high population of tumble weeds most of the time.
It is not that I have nothing to say or share but that I simply feel like I can't do it. I don't know if any of you have issues with the same thing. I am a shy, insecure person that is completely socially awkward and inept. Even though internet makes human interaction easier, social media is still a mysterious foreign entity to me that I feel like I should participate in but am not sure how to do it correctly.
Either way, I love blogging and think of it constantly. I have lots of ideas for posts and love interacting with my readers and helping people out if I can. But sometimes I just don't have enough energy to do all the tiny steps that a complete blog post requires. I currently have 3 written reviews and 15 edited pictures on my computer. Unfortunately most pictures don't match the written reviews and I can't seem to simply put the two parts together on my blog to make it a whole.
The other thing is that I don't like doing things unless I really feel like it. I don't think it is fair to all of you. If I was my own reader I would rather not see any posts for a week than three that are clearly listless and without heart. I want to put the same love and enthusiasm into everything I publish and not just fill the blog with whatever I can find.
I know this post is semi vague and a little bit all over the place but I just wanted to let you know where I was at. I still love writing and posting, but I simply dont have enough energy to do so at the moment.
If there is anything you feel like you want to know before I pull myself up again feel free to email me any time at thirtyfifthofmay@hotmail.com.
And now I leave you with a wonderful and much more eloquent post on the subject by my favorite person Johnny Clyde.
Ok so here is another post about mental illness. This one is especially hard to write as depression is complicated. I find depression to be like snowflakes, no two depression sufferers are the same. Which makes things even more complicated as since you’re depressed, you probably are already feeling like you can’t relate to anyone. Not even depressed people. So you’re all alone, as usual. I can again only speak for me. Maybe you do have people you can relate to with your depression. Also, I am not a writer. I just have ideas or thoughts and just write them without really thinking much, so prepare for a post that is all over the place as it already is. So again, this is MY depression.
So for me, depression is not a feeling. I never feel depressed. Depression is a monster, a monster that has attached itself to my back while I was still in the womb. It’s grown so much apart of me that if I ever were able to find a way to separate us, I wouldn’t know where to start. Which bits are me and which bits are that monster. I have never known where I end and the monster begins. I’ve suffered with depression my entire life. As mentioned in my previous post about mental illness, I lived my entire life without any diagnosis or therapy or anything. Never talked to anyone about it, I always figured that everyone was just like me. Never happy, always pretending. So I never feel depressed, I feel whatever the monster is feeding me. I am depressed. Everyday I am losing to it.
Depression is a hungry monster, it’s deprived you of happiness for so long that you’re not even sure what happiness feels like. What is this warm feeling people talk about? I see it in disney films all the time, people feel the urge to cheer and celebrate. I have never felt the urge to cheer and celebrate. Happiness is this big grand mysterious emotion for me, it’s as complex as love. People cry when they’re happy, but also cry when they’re sad. People dance when they’re happy, but also find themselves dancing when they hate themselves. People smile when they’re happy, but also smile when they are too scared to show they’re not ok. So how is happy so easily defined when love holds the supreme definition of ‘complicated’? Most people say “well, happy is happy!” That doesn’t make any sense. Since when are you allowed to define something with the same word? “An apple is an apple! A tree is a tree!” Where does it end D:
I just don’t get it. I’ve never felt warm from emotions. I’ve had butterfly moments but I do not think that’s the same thing, and I think that my butterflies might be bats as it all feels like multiple hungers more than flutters. I have now completely forgotten my point.
Um, anyway. Depression sucks the life out of all your emotions. It sucks the life out of you. There are moments when I am even more depressed than usual, I think that’s the same for everyone. It’s horrible. The monster does not allow you to feel the same about anything. Not just happiness. Whatever that is. You can’t get excited that you’re getting new roller skates, good news is just news.
“hey are you doing ok?”
Then you bite your lip till it bleeds to stop yourself from crying but that’s no good cause now your fake smile is going to be all bloody.
But nothing feels right. The world has been knocked off it’s axis and you feel every shift. You can’t even get mad like you used to, hunger is gone, sleep is stolen too. That monster takes a hold of everything you thought you were and you’ve got no idea when it’ll give you at least a tiny bit of slack.
So you think about just ending it.
That’s the scariest part of depression. It’s like this monster wants everything you’ve got but for some reason, in the end, it just wants you dead.
I got lucky, my monster made a mistake. My monster fed me so much fear and regret, I ended up being absolutely terrified of death. That didn’t stop me from putting myself purposefully in harms way, though. Which I think a lot of people do. I won’t talk about the things I did but I think you can probably understand. Others aren’t so lucky. Maybe they do fear death as I do, but their monster becomes too much to handle, it ends up trampling their fears. Suicide threats and attempts should always always always be taken seriously and delicately.
Depression doesn’t have to be brought on by anything, and for me it usually isn’t. I was just washing the dishes actually not feeling bad about having to leave the house today, and literally out of nowhere I want to smash all the dishes in the sink, curl up in a ball and sleep until I’m dead. I don’t know why the monster likes to toy with us like this. I was fine today. I was going to work today, I was even excited about working today.
I sadly don’t really have any advice or good news this time. Just wanted to express my feelings on depression and hopefully broaden some views on what it really is. Depression doesn’t mean you’re reaching for a knife every second of the day. Depression is as complicated as love.
I think that the only good news I have is that I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’ll never be happy. I’ll always have depression. So accepting that kinda brought me into this place where I’m able to realize moments where I should be happy. And I think maybe that makes me feel a bit happy? Or maybe just relieved, I don’t really know. But it’s something. Something to genuinely smile about.
I’ve learned to channel my depression into my art, and it honestly lightens the monsters weight. Even if it comes back twice as heavy the next day, at least I stole something back from the monster.
For more of Johnny Clydes artistic shenanigans go to http://johnnyclyde.tumblr.com/
