Thinking Out Loud

These two girls started trying to have a conversation with me today. They were asking me why I was always so depressed and what they could do to help. They were being very nice. I guess they figured I wasn’t a bad guy? Who knows. Anyway…

One of the girls started talking about how she was depressed about 3 or 4 years ago (which meant she was about 13) because she had moved from her home town to where she is now. She was talking about how she missed her friends and now she could only talk on the phone with them or communicate through the internet. She said that she was depressed back then and didn’t want to be alive. She said that she knew what I was going through and that she knows how scary it is to think about suicide.

On one hand, I wanted to snap at her and tell her to shut up. For one, she didn’t know me very well at all. And she had no idea what I’m going through! Because that problem seemed so trivial compared to my problems. I felt that she had no idea what she was talking about and that her depression wasn’t depression, it was her missing her friends and just being upset. Like…Get out of here and don’t talk to me you ignorant *****! Come back with some real problems!

But…

On the other hand, in retrospect, I think that it is selfish to think that her problems were rediculous or trivial. I think many depressed or suicidal people tend to get angry when people try to empathize with them by talking about how they overcame suicide or depression, because it seems so impossible that someone could get over something like that. So we assume that it wasn’t the real deal. They were just sad, not depressed. They weren’t seriously suicidal. How could they be? Over something so unimportant!?

But think about it for a second…

Lots of people could argue that your problems or my problems are unimportant. You say family problems? They say “Well my parents are divorced and my brother/sister died from cancer. But I’m living fine.” You say depression/mental health issues they say “I take pills and get out of the house, and im living fine.”

Everything always seems so insane. How people can just live their lives while I go through this silent war in my mind. How everyone seems to cope with their lives while mine seems like a mess. It seems so easy for them! The emotions I feel in one day are more than the emotions they feel in their whole lives all put together. Then work, and homework, and taking care of my house and family and my mental health and putting up with people at school. It is all absolutely overwhelming. But I know that I’m not the only one to have felt like this. People have gotten past what I’m going through. Sure their circumstances may have been a bit different, but they had their own problems. Maybe they had to deal with their physical health rather than their mental health. But the point is that they got through it. Im just trying to show how people can get so trapped in their thinking of “I am alone and it is impossible to overcome this.” But the proof that you can overcome anything is all around you if you look for it!