Depression Doesn’t Discriminate

Here’s the thing about depression. It doesn’t discriminate. It does not matter if you are rich or poor, young or old, it can get you. Whatever your race or religion it can strike.

But as someone who has suffered from it my whole life, the most interesting aspect of depression to me is that it seemingly makes no difference whether things are going well in your life or going badly. It can smack you upside the head in an instant.

At least that has been my observation from decades of living with depression. I can be walking along thinking I am having a good day and feeling great and then within a few seconds it descends and my chest is feeling crushed and the weight of the world is suddenly on my shoulders.

I also feel queasy and unsettled. There is no seeming “reason” that this has happened (believe me I have repeatedly tried to find one in the moment) and yet in a split second I suddenly feel like a loser, that everything I have achieved in my lifetime makes no difference, that I make no difference. Even walking seems a struggle.

Conversely there have been days that have not gone well and while I found them challenging and frustrating (to say the least!) I was not actually depressed. Go figure. This (October 6-12) is Mental Health Awareness Week and it has given me pause to think about depression and how it has impacted my life.  I wish depression only stuck around one week every year! Alas, not so.

There is also a distinction to be made here between clinical depression and situational depression. People feel low and depressed on losing a loved one, their livelihood, health or other major event. You expect that. I am referring here to clinical depression. It is a different kettle of fish.

Those who don’t suffer from this just do not understand. I don’t really blame them though I wish they’d make an effort to get it a little. I had someone in my life, critical of my depression, who told me they just willed themselves out of it. Of course they failed to add they did it with vast quantities of alcohol!

People will tell you things cannot be that bad, as though “things” have anything really to do with depression. You could win the Nobel Prize in the middle of it and you’d still be depressed. Look on the bright side is another favourite. Really! Please point me to that bright side of feeling as though my life is over. It is better for your mental health if you just don’t try to explain what it is like to live in the black fog of a depression. Those that get it will need no explanation and those that don’t you will likely never enlighten.

I could say that depression ruined my life but that’s just not true. For all the things it took from me, it has made me a much more empathetic and compassionate person. In some ways it has actually helped me to achieve in life (if I have achieved) because I wanted to be able to scream at it that it wasn’t going to take everything away from me.

I’d like to have experienced this existence without depression but that was not to be. There were times (stretching through years) that I thought frequently about ending my life but for one reason or another I didn’t. Luckily those times are past. Looking back I still often wonder how I am here.

The trick with depression, though, is to not give up. I tried different things, different people. You have to keep searching for a way to deal with it, whether with therapy, medication or other tools. You owe that to yourself and to those who live with you. Make sure you do not define yourself by your depression. You are so much more than it.

I was lucky. At the times I was at a danger stage someone always seemed to come along to steer me back to life. I eventually found a wonderful therapist (kissing many toads in the process!) and when I left her two years later I had many tools to fight the brain processes that depression brings on me with such lightning speed.

Yes, in spite of everything I have learned, depression still strikes and I hate it with every ounce I have. It is not easy. I blame myself, even knowing that this is NOT reality, only a dark shadow of it. I feel I should be able to come out of it. In the end I use all those lessons learned and try to get through the day knowing that most likely I will wake up tomorrow and things will feel different. And they usually do.

But I remember the years when every day I carried around depression and believed that my life was ALWAYS going to be like that. I woke up depressed day after day and only sheer will made me get up and on with my life.

With our Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend, I can honestly say I am grateful to have survived. For all the dark moments, my relative mental health allows me now to look back and recognize the people who were there for me and to experience all the moments of brilliance I was fortunate enough to have been given. To have missed them would have been a darn shame.

I truly feel for those of you who suffer from depression. How do you deal with your own black demon?