You say you do. You say you understand. You say things like, “oh, I know exactly how you feel,” and, “I’m always here for you, I’ll never leave.” …but then there comes the time when you know you’re truly alone and that’s typically when you need them the most…and then they say, “well why can’t you just get over it?” and, “do you like being this way or something?”
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Well, what they can’t seem to understand is that in some cases you don’t want to change or get better, and in other cases, you simply just can’t…
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Sometimes even managing to open your eyes in the moment you wake up is the weight of the word coming down on you. Sometimes managing that smile in the hallways is a dam full of water rushing down to wash you away. Sometimes seeing the sun in your world of darkness is the ground you try to hold, but how can you when everyone around you acts like they want to bury you beneath it? Why can’t they understand that we don’t always want to be this way? That we aren’t the only ones like this? That what they think is depression for them, is only mere sadness compared to the living dead we have felt for years on end?
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Sadness because of getting yelled at or failing a test or getting dumped…that’s not depression…that’s just temporary…
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Come back and tell me to get better when your sadness becomes the weight of your own mind crushing your soul.
3 comments
Lots of people seem to confuse unwillingness with inability.
Because you can’t, doesn’t mean you don’t want to.
Because you don’t want to, doesn’t mean you can’t.
Because you can, doesn’t mean you want to.
Because you want to, doesn’t mean you can.
I relate to what you wrote. When the most important person on my life left me i wasn’t able to deal with it (i’m still not able to).
A time went by and she tried to contact me because she “couldn’t deal with seeing the man she loved waste his life over meaningless things” (she meant our relationship). Tried to make her understand, that if she could deal with it i was happy for her (and i meant it), but i just couldn’t because i wasn’t the one who decided to walk away… that she should at least respect my pain over losing her, and that she has no right to tell me how to deal with things (i didn’t treat her bad, didn’t insult her, tried to listen and just explain things the best i could). Besides, she knew that i had a pretty rough time for years already, and that i had plenty of others reasons to be in bad condition, this was just… icing on the cake if you want to call it that way.
Next thing i know i was being told i was an idiot, an imbecile, that i wanted to be in this situation because i only wanted to and needed to grow up, that she was not going to treat me like a child like everybody else does, and that she was not wasting anymore time because it was obvious to her that i just didn’t want to listen.
So yes… people will say they understand and listen to you, but if they have not been in the same situation you are, it is pretty difficult that their “understanding” will last more than a small period of time.
My best friend (who has actually attempted suicide 3 times…and failed, obviously) is the closest to me…and even he has let slip that he thinks I enjoy my depression. Someone who should understand how I feel because he’s been there, someone who’s closer to me than anyone, and he says that.
Because wanting to slit your own throat every time you run out of distractions is such a desirable feeling, of course. If I could will myself happy, man oh man…
He has not abandoned me, but I know he grows weary. Anyone would.
(is this a roundabout way of saying I DO understand how you feel? because that feels like a taunt considering the point of your post is that no one actually does. we’re all in our own personal versions of hell. similar, but not the same. different demons. different tortures.)