Depression

The first waves of depression washed over me in my mid teens, it was decades ago. It’s difficult, trying to get a handle on something so immense when you’re a teenager. Everyone knows that teenage years are tough and everyone knows that teenagers are moody and when you’re having a tough moody time as a teenager you figure it’s all part of the shitty deal.

I mean I did used to sit mournfully on my windowsill in the dark and look out at the shadowy woods beyond; I wasn’t doing myself any favours. Still. I was, like, 17.

Eventually, when I had the kind of spectacular head explosion which can’t be ignored, people were mobilised. Educational psychologists and family psychiatrists and counsellors swarmed into action, trying to solve the proble. Maybe it helped for a little, only for a little while. But then another wave washed over me, and then the waves started crashing rather than washing, and gradually ever so gradually I stopped waving and started drowning to my emotion.

I snatched a Prozac prescription just before I was 19, and have been on and off various mood. Despite all that, another wave crashed over me again a few months ago; again it felt, for a while, like drowning. It got scary but I made it out alive. I think — I think — I’ve surfaced now, that I stand dripping on dry land.

There’s a lot of talk these days about how we need to talk about mental illness. I guess I’m fortunate in that I broke that seal when I was still in my teens. Howling and hammering on my dad’s chest so I’ve never had real trouble bringing it up. So that’s great. I can talk to my family and talk to my friends and expressing my feeling on twitter to, bafflingly, continue to follow me.

But as I’ve got older I’ve learned to not go into too much detail about it. I speak about the gloom in my head in inoffensive broad strokes, unthreatening generalities.

You see what used to happen when I told people I was feeling bad is that they’d ask why I was feeling bad, and I’d tell them why I thought I was feeling bad, and then they’d will try and make it better. They’d do this because people are kind, and humane, and don’t want others to be in pain. They want to help.

And it never worked.

For all the talk that it’s time to talk, I eventually realised I don’t want someone to talk to; I just need someone to listen instead.

The problem is that the reasons I think I’m feeling bad aren’t the real reasons I’m feeling bad; even if I have a valid concerns, they’re turned into grotesque caricatures. Because depression lies. Depression twists my thoughts and does it from deep inside my soul, so I don’t even know my thoughts are being twisted. It sits at my centre and oozes out feelings of shame, guilt, self-hate. And adrift I try to moor those feelings to the world, to explain them.

Depression will say ‘I’m a failure’, and because feelings attach to thoughts it becomes ‘I’m a failure because…. Because I’m single, because I’m in a job I hate, because I got a B grade and it should have been an A. Because I forgot to water the plants because I can’t even do the fucking dishes because I’m sat, alone, again, crying into my hands on a Saturday night. Pathetic asshole.

Depression will say ‘I’m wicked’, and it becomes ‘I’m wicked because…’. Because I’m ignoring my friends because I’m neglecting my family because I’m wallowing in self pity. Because i deceived her. Because I’m wishing I was dead, when I’ve so many lost loved ones who were taken too soon or left me.

‘I’m shameful, I’m guilty, I’m a waste’, to each feeling endless thoughts attach and I’m left standing in a storm of words and reasons. So when friends that’s kind, humane, loving friends ask ‘why are you depressed?’, all these words spill out. But the words mean nothing to me. All that’s real, really, are the feelings. I’m sad because I’m sad.

The solutions are pointless. You cannot silver line depression, you cannot turn this frown upside down. All the advice given left me angry and frustrated that they just didn’t get it, made me ever more convinced I was a completely broken human being. And what kind of dick feels angry with people for just trying to help? All these people trying to solve my problem and I only came away angry, isolated, shamed. Because depression sits between the world and myself, and depression lies within it.

People want to help, but they think depression is a problem to be solved; depression isn’t a problem to be solved. Depression is a storm at sea, and we, adrift, don’t need suggestions; we need someone to hold on to, to be with us until we finally reach dry land and make us feel better. We’re so conditioned to view active effort as the only valuable thing that people discount the real, heartfelt value of just being. The thing my friends have ever done is given me space to hurt, without trying to fix me. The kindest thing my flatmates ever did was let me know I didn’t have to pretend to be OK, and that was OK. When I’m depressed, I don’t need fixing.

I just need holding.

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