What is Depression?

Hey guys. I’m new to this place but I thought I might share something I wrote a couple weeks back. I read someone’s post online saying he was going to commit suicide that day, and I felt this rush of empathetic love toward him. It led me to write a passage about depression.

A very short background about me: I’m a junior in college. Five years ago, I went through a two-year-long period of depression. I attempted suicide in the summer going into my sophomore year of high school. Since then, life has gotten increasingly better each year and I’m eternally grateful that I didn’t succeed in killing myself.

So here it goes:

What is depression?

Depression is a creeping shadow that holds you down. It forms a wall of darkness around you, thick and opaque so that nothing gets in. You have tons of people giving you advice or trying to cheer you up, but it doesn’t get in. They’re on a different wavelength than you. They don’t know the shadow. So while they say things like “Sleep on it and you’ll feel better tomorrow!” or “Think about the people that would be hurt if you were gone!” it makes sense to them, but to the depressed person it’s just white noise. Because how can you tell someone that carries on their heart the emotional equivalent of an 18-wheeler truck, that it’ll be better tomorrow? How can you tell that to someone for whom every day has been an uphill battle to get out of bed, to be around others, to live another day? When I was depressed every day was a constant question of whether I should kill myself or live another day. Every day, every event that happened, went up as a bullet into my mental pros-and-cons list of living. And the bullets on the “death” side were adding up and adding up, to the point where I was determined that the final bullet would be in my brain.

Nothing gets out of the shadow either. When I was depressed I felt like no one understood. I felt like an empty human being with nothing to offer to the world except for a body of flesh and a frown. I felt like a zombie wandering around aimlessly, going through the motions of a life that I didn’t even want to live anymore. I was in my own dark world. At school classmates would see my drooping eyes and hopeless expression and ask, “Are you ok?” and I would always reply, “Yeah, I’m just tired.” because I was sure they wouldn’t understand. This is where the loneliness comes from. I didn’t want to tell people that I wasn’t ok because I didn’t think they would understand and I didn’t want to burden them with my sadness. And the easiest way to hide your immense sadness from other people is to hide it from yourself. I guarded my negative emotions in a lockbox and buried it deep within my weary heart, throwing away the key. This is where the emotional numbness comes from.

When I was depressed, I felt unloved. Helpless. Different. Lesser. Stupid. Lazy. Crazy. Unworthy of life. Unworthy of happiness. I bore a two-ton shadow on my shoulders all day that whispered into my ear: “You’re worthless. There’s something wrong with you, and that’s why you’re depressed. You’re never going to be normal. You’re never going to get better. You might as well just kill yourself now and put yourself out of misery.” And it frustrated me that no one could see this darkness that kept weighing me down.

These people that were telling me (even with good intentions) to socialize and get out of the house weren’t making it much better, even if – and here’s the kicker – getting out of the house probably would have helped with my depression. The thing that even the best of people don’t realize is that when you’re depressed, you don’t want advice. I already knew most of the suggestions that people were giving me (just take it day by day, take a shower and maintain a healthy eating and sleeping schedule, think about all the people that love you, etc.).

What I really wanted was for someone to share that pain with me. Not in a sadistic way, but in an empathetic way. I wanted someone to sit down and listen. I wanted for someone to ask me questions, hear me out and tell me, “I feel your pain. You’re not alone. I’m here feeling this pain with you. I’m not going to try to fix you or change you. I love you as you are, shadow and all.”