Depression, Part 2

This is a post I made on a Facebook thread which I thought was descriptive enough to repost here. Redacted in one place to remove a friend’s name.

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Depression is a mental illness. It is not something we can ‘love ourselves’ out of, and it’s kind of horribly insulting to imply that that’s the case. You know why I apologise about my feelings?

Because I hate them.

I hate them because half the time hating things is better than not being able to feel anything at all, or feeling everything so painfully that I literally become an invalid because I can’t exist like a human being so I hide in my room and play mindless games that allow me to not think about the outside world for a while. I accept that these feelings exist, but that certainly doesn’t stop my brain from having them. As a friend said, it must be nice for the people who don’t have brains that have decided they hate them. Depression is a lot of things; rational is not one of them.

And this puts pressure on the people I’m close to because it isn’t really their job to know how I’m feeling today nor how to help me do things like get out of bed or do laundry or things that not-mentally-ill people can do without thinking. Feeling sad and depression are dramatically different. Everyone feels sad at one time or another.

But I am not just sad — I don’t remember what it’s like to not suffer from depression anymore. I don’t remember how it feels to be content or to wake up happy more than one day in a row. I don’t remember what it’s like to not have a low hum of anxiety over leaving the goddamn house or seeing a particular person at a party with whom I’ve had a spat or having someone watch me eat.

I love myself just fine — really, I do — but depression is an uglier monster than that. I will feel my feelings exactly how I want to, and if I feel the need to apologise, to say I’m sorry for how my revolting pit of despair might make you, the reader, feel, I am sympathetic to the fact that you may want to help but be unsure of how, I will apologise and I will walk away from that apology with every ounce of my dignity intact.

My experience with mental illness requires a lot more cure than love. It’s a start, but as much as my hippity-doo-dah side might want to believe love is all you need, sometimes you also need Prozac.