afflicted.

This isn’t something I talk about. Ever. I have tried writing about it before, many times, but it always seems to turn out trite. Maybe this one will make it out into the universe…  

I have done battle with Major Depressive Disorder (depression) in some way or other since I was in my teens, cycling in and out of depression for over twenty-five years. When I was a teen, I didn’t know it was depression. Only as I have started to understand my depression can I look back and know now that’s what it was then. It is something that has taken me a really long time to fully acknowledge, I have always tried to play it down or shrug it off. I've occasionally only mentioned my struggles with depressive mood disorder to very few select people. Never in depth, or at length; and on my terms- with no questions. There has never been a scenario where I went into great detail about it or have been completely open and honest about it- with anyone, not even those closest to me. Mental Health is not an open topic.

Depression is not the same for everyone. I can’t speak to what depression looks like for everyone; however, what I do know is that depression is NOT sadness. Seemingly, my depression would be a walk in the park if it were sadness. Depression does not discriminate whom it affects by age, gender, race, career, relationship status, or whether a person is rich or poor. And, it is NOT a choice. My depression does not come in the form of a tidy package of “crying it out.” My depression is a messy, unpleasant atrocity. It’s a thick black paste and muck of bleakness. An empty, vacant mood. It creates a planet all its own, mainly impermeable to the influence from others except as shadow presences urging me to come out and rejoin the world, take in a movie, go out for a bite, cheer up. I feel isolated in my own pitch-darkness, even when I am in a room full of conversation and light.

My depression is a process of gradual erosion that is impossible to spot while experiencing it. The fight is ungainly. There is no grace or elegance. It’s a flurry of my own self-loathing and worthlessness. It's hard to admit that you are afflicted, thrashing, spiraling, spinning in a perpetual state of agony. How do you tell another human being or a group about that? Generally, people do not want to hear anything other than "positive vibes only" so it's less of a hassle to say you're okay and put on a sham of a brave face. Even if people think you’re having a bad day, a bad month, a bad year, it’s better than anyone knowing the mental agony terrorizing your soul. Besides, the general public views depression as someone being “sad” and something that you can “snap out of,” or kick with a brisk walk, shake off with an attitude adjustment, wash off with a hot bath, or a girls night out. For those who don’t know what it’s like to fight the fight, it seems unproblematic- it’s just a mindset adjustment. The stigma attached to depression is as ugly as the affliction.

Here’s the thing with depression- you can’t define your illness, objectify it, separate yourself from it. Often, incredibly, you don’t know that you’re even depressed; your essence is just shed, layer after rotting layer, until you can hope for nothing more than gentle oblivion. It’s a storm in my soul; heavy air, suffocating staleness, dark and heady, howling, thick, uprooting… turbulent and unforgiving; leaving nothing of my former self in its wake. It changes the make-up of my mind, my energy, my spirit. It fights medication, alternative healing, and resists therapy. I feel punishing worthlessness and debilitating helplessness. I feel plaguing guilt and an intense feeling of overwhelmingness. I feel deep penetrating self-loathing. Blackness. I am held captive by morose thoughts doing their wild and wily gymnastics of despair as I struggle to put on my shoes. You shouldn’t. You should. Why are you? Why aren’t you? Why didn’t you? There’s no hope, it’s too late, it has always been too late. Give up, go back to bed, there’s no hope. There’s so much to do. There’s not enough to do. You can’t do it. You’re no good. Look at you. You can’t do it.

Showing up at work is daunting, let alone actually being productive. I force myself to get dressed, put on makeup, go to lunches, events, school functions, engage with my kids, my husband. A simple ‘how’s the weather’ conversation is painstaking. Everyday tasks that most people take for granted-ike showering, getting dressed, doing the dishes are insurmountable obstacles. As I go about my days trying to drum up conversation with co-workers and family, my thoughts are dark, scrambling ones, ruthless in their snipping insistence. You’re a failure. A burden. Useless. Worse than useless- worthless. What’s wrong with you? You don’t belong here, or there, or anywhere. There is no hope. Look at you. You’re broken and unfixable.

Being at the mercy of my mind is a curse.

It’s a total loss of interest in activities and socializing. It’s no energy and excessive fatigue. It’s aches, pains, headaches, and digestive problems without any clear physical cause. It’s feeling completely unmotivated to do just about anything. I have difficulty concentrating, remembering, and making decisions. I have insomnia, early-morning awakening, oversleeping. My weight drastically fluctuates. I am irritable, agitated, petulant, snappy, short, edgy, mad.

With or without treatment, sometimes depressions take hold and won’t let go. Consuming my day-to-day living, these depressions come to define me, filling out all the available space, leaving no possibility of a “before” or an “after,” taking on “a life of its own” beyond the exertions of my will. I have gone from being able to put on a faltering imitation of mental health, to giving up all pretense of a manageable disguise. In these despondent periods, I find it painful to be conscious, so I stop doing much of anything except sleeping. When I am awake, I feel a kind of lethal fatigue, as if I am swimming through tar. Text messages and voicemails go unanswered, e-mails unread. In my inert and agitated state, I cannot concentrate long enough to read- not so much as a 150 character tweet. It is a monumental task to complete even the simplest chore or piece of work. Usual places- my office, my home- are alien spaces to me. Being around people is exhausting and excruciating. I essentially withdrawal from communication, except only when necessary to keep up the façade, adopting the mask of all-rightness that I learned to wear a long time ago in order to navigate the world. My thoughts intrude like hail hammering a windowpane that there is no way out of the reality of being me. I struggle in vain to stop my mind, my thoughts, my feelings, to get away from this paralyzed numbness that has become my daily existence. Where there was once dependable coping skills, there is now void.  

Depression progressively eats away my whole being from the inside. It’s with me when I wake up in the morning, telling me there’s nothing or anyone to get up for. It’s with me when my  phone rings and I’m terrified to answer it. It’s with me when I look into the eyes of those I love, and my eyes prick with tears as I try, and fail, to remember how to love them, and wonder why they should ever think of loving the grieving shadow I have become. It’s with me as I search within for those now eroded things that once made me who I was. My interests. My creativity. My inquisitiveness. My humor. My warmth. My sense of joy and absurdity. My connection with people’s thoughts and hearts and needs. And it’s with me when I wake terrified from each nightmare and pace the house, thinking frantically of how I can escape my poisoned life; escape the embrace of the demon that is eating away my mind, emotions, and sanity like a slow drip of acid. There is always a reason I didn’t get out of bed for four days- a migraine, a cold, a muscle spasm, the list goes on. There is always an excuse why I can’t go here or there. There is always an explanation, a justification, a rationalization, a pretext, a defense, a plea, an apology… a lie. Until somehow, I muster up some resolve to fight, kick, tear and claw my way back, and detach from this dance-off with depression.

This illness is an inward looking one, a parasite of the mind that eats away your heart, emotions and vitality. It’s a disease that turns you into a barely functioning robot, a person numbly going through the actions of life to conceal their illness from judging eyes that would stigmatize their weakness. But always, ALWAYS, the biggest stigma comes from yourself. You blame yourself for the illness that you can only dimly see.

Although some tiny part of me retains a dim sense of the more functioning person I once was- like a room with a closed door that is never entered anymore- it becomes increasingly difficult to envision myself ever inhabiting that version of myself again. There have been many recurrent episodes, many years of trying to fight off this debilitating demon of a thing. I have wanted to die before, but at the same time, I really didn’t want to. I just didn’t want to feel the pain any longer. I just long to be a person who wasn’t consumingly depressed.

The fact that severe depression, much as it might be treated as an illness, doesn’t send out clear signals for others to pick up on, but rather doses its deadly dismantling work under the cover of normalcy. The psychological pain is agonizing, but there is no way of proving it, no bleeding wounds to point to. How much simpler it would be all around if I could put my mind in a cast, like a broken ankle, and elicit murmurings of sympathy from other people instead of skepticism (“You can’t really be feeling as bad as all that”). In the end, there is no one to intervene on your behalf when you disappear again into what feels like a psychological dungeon. I have come to realize that I have lost myself to these bouts of depression more times than I can count.

Depression is not a battle that you win once and it’s over. It’s an eternal war. When I succeed in a battle, it is glorious. I feel triumphant. It’s a grand feat when I fight my inner darkness and win. I celebrate the victories, no matter how long they last because there is this: the quiet terror of severe depression never entirely passes once you’ve experienced it. It hovers behind the scenes, placated temporarily by medication and renewed energy, waiting to slither back in, unnoticed by others. It sits in the space behind your eyes, making its presence felt even in those moments when other, lighter matters are at the forefront of your mind. It tugs at you, keeping you from ever being fully at ease. Worst of all, it honors no season and respects no calendar; it arrives precisely when it feels like it.

For right now, my depression has stepped back, giving me room to move forward. At first, I forgot  what it was like to be without my depression, and I wondered how I would recognize myself. It’s a slow process coming out of the poisonous fog. I have to re-inhabitate my own life, coax myself along. My engagement slowly starts to bounce back. The day ahead stops looking like a mountainous climb. I do know for certain it will return, sneaking up on me when I am not looking, but meanwhile there is now light, and I’m holding fast to the long perspective. I absolutely can’t fight it alone. For me, I take antidepressants. (I have said this before, I am not qualified to argue the merits of medication), but I am suited to say that for me, I feel obligated, responsible, to utilize the resources available to me that will help me. Medication is not a cure; it is an aid. (An aid, my depression HATES. Every. Single. Day. I can’t comprehend why the battle over taking a single pill is so fiercely fought, but it is….and I have lost that battle some days, which led to more days, which led to weeks, which led to the black hole…)

I practice being intentional in my life, I actively work on healing, and I can’t stop taking my medication, or depression wins. Each morning I wake up, I take a full, deep, intentional breath, and I conscientiously make the choice to CHOOSE mental wellness. I give myself permission to take up space in this life. There is a Japanese proverb “Nana korobi yaoki jinsei wa kore kara da.” which translates as “Fall seven times, rise eight times, life begins now.” I have fallen, but most importantly, I have risen. Again. And life begins. Again.