Depression
This past week and a half has been really tough. Friday, I was diagnose with 'mild' depression, although I am close to severe. For those of you who are lucky not to know, depression isn't just about feeling sad and sulking around all the time. You naturally isolate yourself from the rest of the world without even noticing and you find going out in public frightening. Now, I'm not talking about being nervous or embarrased. I find going out in public to be positively terrifing.
Being depressed is emotionally paralyzing. You have trouble doing things, no matter how badly you want or need to do them. This includes all the little things, like brushing your hair, cleaning your face, getting something to eat. It also destroys your appetite to the point that you hardly ever eat. You also tend to suffer from severe insomnia. I don't fall asleep until after four, and I wake up either between eight and nine in the morning, or two and four in the afternoon. Today was the first day I was able to get a decent amount of sleep while waking up at 11. I usually sleep through most of the day.
You often times feel lonely and you blame and punish youself over the smallest of things, like not emptying the dishwasher or failing to answer the phone in time. All the tiniest things that people hardly ever think about are suddenly huge things and you find that your world revolves around them. Also, you find it extremely difficult to focus on anything. It's like being in a room with 200 radios playing different stations and someone asking you to listen to one. You can't do it. And that's what it's like all the time. I'm trying to read more. It helps to make me feel a little better but, I find it so hard to focus that often times I can only manage to read one to four pages at a time before having to move on to something else. In fact, I am finding it difficult to focus on writing this.
Now, I don't want you to mistake this as me asking for you pity, because that is the last thing I want. But, I think the general public's understanding of depression is entirely wrong. It isn't about being sad all the time. In fact, one can appear to be the happiest person in the world and still be depressed. So, I just want everyone to understand what depression really is. That it controls your life, whether you want it to or not. I can only hope that none of you ever have to go through this experience.
Being depressed is emotionally paralyzing. You have trouble doing things, no matter how badly you want or need to do them. This includes all the little things, like brushing your hair, cleaning your face, getting something to eat. It also destroys your appetite to the point that you hardly ever eat. You also tend to suffer from severe insomnia. I don't fall asleep until after four, and I wake up either between eight and nine in the morning, or two and four in the afternoon. Today was the first day I was able to get a decent amount of sleep while waking up at 11. I usually sleep through most of the day.
You often times feel lonely and you blame and punish youself over the smallest of things, like not emptying the dishwasher or failing to answer the phone in time. All the tiniest things that people hardly ever think about are suddenly huge things and you find that your world revolves around them. Also, you find it extremely difficult to focus on anything. It's like being in a room with 200 radios playing different stations and someone asking you to listen to one. You can't do it. And that's what it's like all the time. I'm trying to read more. It helps to make me feel a little better but, I find it so hard to focus that often times I can only manage to read one to four pages at a time before having to move on to something else. In fact, I am finding it difficult to focus on writing this.
Now, I don't want you to mistake this as me asking for you pity, because that is the last thing I want. But, I think the general public's understanding of depression is entirely wrong. It isn't about being sad all the time. In fact, one can appear to be the happiest person in the world and still be depressed. So, I just want everyone to understand what depression really is. That it controls your life, whether you want it to or not. I can only hope that none of you ever have to go through this experience.