Some sort of sadness.
the journey From the beginning of this blog I have spoken of, or alluded to, my struggle with depression. It is a disease that I have dealt with for as long as I can remember. Even as a child I remember having feelings of utter insecurity in who I was and thinking that no one loved me, not even my white cat Snowball. It seems funny to say that now, thinking back to a day when I was approximately 9 or 10. My brother and I were home during the days, because we were homeschooled, and there was one day when some sort of sadness descended on me and I felt quite alone amidst a family who absolutely loved me unconditionally. I sought refuge in my cat, Snowball, who was quite a moody feline. She snubbed me and I began to cry. I remember being overwhelmed with a sense of low self-worth. But mostly I remember feeling lost.
I believe in my struggle with this disease the most prominent feeling I experience is that of being lost. It was almost two years ago when my depression was at its worst. I remember the time vividly, but through a different lens. At the time I was so utterly out of sync with reality that I could not begin to see any hope of ever thinking or feeling normal again. There would be times of confusion and emotional chaos that would leave me gasping for breath and grasping for any thread of sanity I could have possibly had left. Many nights I found myself in my car driving somewhere, anywhere, trying to get away from the rampant thoughts that debilitated me. I felt small, like a little child. I felt fragile and raw. I felt lost. I was lost.
During that time reality was no more than the minute world I had created in my head. A world where nothing, absolutely nothing made any sense. A world where the pain, of not understanding anything about the world around me or myself, would grow so intense the only thoughts I would have were those of hurting myself to release some of it. At times I would press my fingernail so deeply in my palms that they would leave marks that lasted longer than they should have.
The lack of reality that results from depression still amazes and astounds me. On her personal website, dervala.net, Dervala writes:
My mind plunged into pointless, terrifying rants that came packaged as reality, revealed at last. Life is ugly. No one will help. No one could help. Help with what?
Like rheumatoid arthritis, depression turns your own body against itself. It chews not on your cartilage, but on your brain cells and your sense of reality. It’s as seductive as a wife-beater, shutting out other voices to turn itself into your only friend. The only one who tells the truth about the bleakness of the world. All your energy goes towards getting through whatever stands in your way—struggling, slogging, pushing, through work and small talk and getting food—whatever it is you have to get through until you can be alone again with the voice who can be trusted.
The person I was when I was depressed was not me. I resent the person who says that depression is a natural aspect of humanity, that it is natural to have highs and lows. It is natural to have ebb and flow, but it is not natural to be that low. It is not natural to nurse yourself with thoughts of escape or death. The person I was when I was depressed was me being controlled by a disease, a disease so deceptive you are not aware you are in fact suffering and in many ways dying.
After almost a year of a losing struggle with the disease I began to slowly emerge from the suffocating cloud of sadness and hopelessness that was choking me. Slowly I crawled from the intense isolation that made me feel alone and different. I began to talk to my mother about how I was feeling and she shared with me about her experiences with the disease. Through her honesty I found the courage to speak to someone about it, someone who could help me. I visited the doctor, a wonderful doctor that hugged me and was able to hear my heart through garbled words and tears, a doctor who herself had experienced this disease. She shared with me her experiences and slowly my isolation began to melt and I began to see that others have suffered like me. I was not alone. I was able to hear past the voices that tried to claim depression was natural, the voices that yelled that this was because of me and my decisions, the voices that disregarded the medical breakthroughs concerning brain chemistry. I was able to finally hear a voice of reason, a voice from the other side-- the side of true reality. And although it is hard to admit it on this website where I do not know who reads these words, I started taking medication for my disease.
The transformation my mind has undergone in the past year, after getting help, is amazing. I finally feel that I am the person I was meant to be. It cannot express it better than what Dervala goes on to say later in her essay:
When I was eight years old I got glasses for the first time. I put them on in the living room, and when I looked out the window, I could see each blade of grass, crisp and bright and distinct, where before there had been a soft green blur. I looked at everything that day, and said hello to all the small things. It was amazing, that all this had been there all along.
Getting better from depression was like that. Missing dimensions popped back up. Plain old normal days tasted crisp and delicious. And then there were the bittersweet replays, when I traveled through the previous months and years, and counted all I’d misheard, misfelt, and missed. Depression isn’t noble or interesting; it’s monotonous, self-absorbed misery that leaves little room for art or kindness or other people.
It scares me when I think about the person I am now and the person I was then. It scares me to think that there is the possibility of going back to that state of mind, of becoming that person again, living in that reality. Here lately I have been slipping. Be it due to the changing seasons, life's stressors, or a change in lifestyle, something in my brain has begun to slip and I catch myself thinking that old way, sliding down into that pseudo-reality. This is terrifying. I am not going to let that happen. I have already caught myself on many occasions isolating myself in my insecurity. It is these moments of lucidity in retrospection that lets me know that I have not slipped too far yet, that there is still time to grab hold of something and begin the fight to pull myself up. And that is what I am doing.
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"I thank my God upon every remembrance of you." Phil. 1:3