I was depressed almost 2 years and I didn’t know it. Only in hindsight did I connect the dots.
When you are depressed you are alone with your negative thoughts. The feeling of uselessness is strong. Your general outlook on life is bleak- we are all going to die anyway, so why try. Simple things like getting out of bed, or cleaning become a chore. Aside: I wonder how parents of young kids get through depression. Must be tough.
You go to work or school late, looking unkempt coz you don’t really care. Your boss or lecturer mentions that in a joke, and you laugh. If you are very valuable, they pull you aside and remind you of looking great. If you are not, that’s the beginning of the end. In a few weeks, you are fired or failing in class.
What brings about living life this way? Grief? Guilt, repressed and recurring baggage from long ago? Usually a trigger sets off these negative states. States because these are emotions that won’t go away and give space to other emotions. No space for joy; no space for hope; no space for meaning.
Depression pushes down every other emotion, and like a dictator puts your life locked on autopilot. You are half-conscious, mostly, going through the motions like a robot. What about confiding in others? Why would you do that? Maybe all these guys are facing the same thing, maybe you’ve just got to handle it better, is your thought.
Your relationships will suffer, especially those that are majorly transactional or involve the division of labour. If you are the breadwinner depressed because you missed a promotion and your wife left you, your relationship with kids suffers. If you are usually the life of the party for youngins and suddenly you are withdrawn, those Friday invites reduce and eventually they stop. Nobody wants a killjoy.
At this point, you are like nobody wants me. You think you are a liability. You overthink on that. Your thoughts take you back decades to childhood when you got lost in a market and your parents had to look for you for 3 hours. You overanalyze and overcritique yourself. You call your mother, she picks up, and asks you why you are calling her at 3AM. You didn’t even realize it was 3AM. You have been overthinking for the last eight hours.
You tell your mum goodnight, and you’ll visit on Friday. You can’t sleep. You overthink on that too. Maybe you shoulf get sleeping pills. That cheers you up a bit. At least a problem you can get a solution to. You get 3 hours of sleep, and dream of sleeping pills, and blissful sleep.
The next day you are feeling alive, more alive than ever. That talk with your mother made you realize you hadn’t been sleeping well. At work, a colleague compliments you; you look sharp today. Another says hi and smiles. It takes you a minute to realize that bar today, lately you’ve been dreary and bad vibes. Your panic and start thinking about your troubles again. Angry ex-wife, child support, work deadlines. Your 2 hours of compartmentalization is gone. Sleeping pills. You hold on to that thought like OCD.
Okay I hadn’t pictured it would go this specific route. You are now thinking of sleeping pills and overdose/suicide aren’t you?
That day somehow you become more social, make dry jokes, and ask about how people are doing. You used to do that way back before the divorce and missing out on promotion. Old work friends say they miss out on that side of you. Another whispers to you that he has a female friend, a divorcee too but she has no kids. Perharps she might introduce you two one of these days. You want to say No but you don’t you say ‘Sure, one of these days we can all meet.’
Later at home, 2 sleeping pills in your system, you still wake up at 4AM. You’ve managed 2 hours sleep. You take two more. You wake up at 8AM, you are going to be late for work.
You are late for work but it’s a slow day so your boss is not on your neck. You google the sleeping pills you bought. They are supposed to be strong. Not more than two every eight hours. You took 4 in six hours. You read that 4 can kill a grown man. You start thinking what if you could have died.
You think more on death as the day goes by. If you die no more drama with the ex-wife. But you’ll miss your 2 kids who you only see two weekends in a month, and nowadays you don’t want them to see you that much because they might realize daddy is sad. Anyway, that’s a pro and a con. Without realizing it, you are starting to think about suicide.
The Mind is one place we really have no clue about what goes on there. The brain is an organ, everybody who knows what biology deals with understands that. But what is the Mind? How are thoughts generated? How do concepts relate?
Reading Carl Jung’s book about dreams, and Victor Frankl “Man’s search for Meaning” helped me. Then Allan Watts philosophy of Zen, and stoicism, gave me anchorage. Philosophy and psychology helped save my mental health. Talking to strangers too, helping them. Finally, writing, having a way to express myself, helped. If I could paint or play the piano I would, but writing is my art, and I immersed myself in it. And I still do. Thankfully for those 2 years I avoided social media and the pressure.
The purpose of this article was to demonstrate how much we don’t understand mental health, depression, and why people decide to end it all via suicide. We don’t even know how the mind works. Carl Jung almost went made trying to decipher the mind or so it is rumored. I saw that in a Jordan Peterson lecture.
Closing remark is this if you have some mental health issues consider having a creative outlet. if you find it hard to talk to people then let your art do it for you. And yes, it is art, even if it’s just putting words next to each other. Some of you might ask, “What about us those with zero creative bones?”
I call it Expressive art because it is an umbrella term. Art and Craft classes encapsultes what I meant. It can be pottery, knitting, making paper planes, colouring a colouring book (a friend actually does this it’s so brilliant)… the list is virtually endless. Just express yourself. You’ll find meaning, purpose, and in a round-robin manner you’ll chase away depression.
And finally, we are not the same. Some people are more prone to depression than others. So please don’t consider my experience and commentary as irrefutable truth. Do you own research, find your customized cocktail of solutions. Mine was Philosophy+Psychology+Poetry (Triple P). Yours could be Religion+Photography+Travel. Know thyself so you can make cocktails you like.
Unreliable Narrator 