"You Have No Reason To Be Depressed"

Today I had an epiphany.

I think it's a cause for celebration but now I also feel... bad.

Whenever I watch a video that touches on depression and I see in the comment section that people also say how people they knew who were young and depressed tried to harm themselves and when they talked to someone like their parents who has bigger problems, they get written off. And then what follows in is everyone chiming in that's bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, parents bad, world bad. People like that bad.

Here's the thing.

Are they wrong though? No not the people, the family members that denied their feelings, I'm talking about the depressed person themselves. As someone who was once and still is, but not as much as before... my high school phase I could understand, but middle school? I didn't really have a reason.

Have you ever as a depressed person tried talking to others before? I think it was 1-2 years ago when I hopped on instagram and stumbled across someone who publicly announced they wanted to kill themselves. I who once had similar thoughts tried to play good samaritan and cheer them up but instead I was the one who got depressed.

The person told me they were well off, but it sounded like they regretted having their parents tell them what major to pursue during college and hook them up with a job, they didn't enjoy work, but from the way they spoke I could tell they were competent, they didn't complain about being bad at it, feeling guilty, no they just had no interest in it.

When I made suggestions, they had every excuse.

They tried getting a pet, volunteering, travelling etc, basically everything I suggested to them that worked for me. They just had no motivation or interest in anything and they lived like that for years and basically wanted to end it.

I grasped at the last straw I had. I said it would make his parents sad. It was clear he was that child that did everything his parents said, he didn't make decisions for himself but was still competent enough to live up to their parents' expectations. How would they feel not knowing a part of the reason their son wanted to die was that they paved the road for him?

I don't remember their response entirely, basically that they think it would be better for his family if he stopped living because he was a waste of space and resources. A lot of the things he was saying were thoughts I had myself but he shouldn't be having those thoughts, not when he's well off. Is what I thought.

My sympathy for this person was dwindling drastically with each response because just so you know, financial insecurity was one of the stems of my depression back in high school, an ambiguous one that made me delay choosing colleges or going to the guidance counselor because I had told myself if I waited it out everything would be okay.

My mom had a job and with her pay, we didn't qualify for our school's free lunch, all that money went to the bills leaving me with nothing so a lot of times I would get snacks from the vending machine or just starve and preoccupy myself in the library with homework and my beloved books.

I wish I had parents to connect me to a good- paying job. Wish my parents were financially stable, wish I was that competent, wish everyone in my family was well off. I wish.

I showed my regrets but still tried to encourage them not to do it. In the end, they responded that they had wanted to go online and talk about it to see how someone would react, I don't fully understand it even now but basically seeing that I cared encouraged them to go through with it.

I had never been so confused, and shocked before. For a second I wondered what if they were just pretending and I was being toyed with but later as I realized it was just like the book I hated with a burning passion "13 reasons why" that for whatever reason got put on a pedestal and adapted into a tv show even though it's trash.

At the end of the day, they made the decision because they wanted to die, things were looking up for them but they still wanted to die, all the reasons they claimed were just flimsy excuses, crappy citations on a college essay that don't even cover the full paper.

Part of me was so pissed, I wanted to scream that if they really wanted to give up on life like that they should donate to a charity or better yet, do some good before they leave with what they had. But I held myself back, brought myself back to my senses, knowing full well money wouldn't be the same if you didn't earn it for yourself. And maybe that was his dilemma. Maybe that's the curse of kids that grow up with wealth?

Still, still, to me, that wasn't a good enough reason.

Today, I had an epiphany while reading some comments and I realized something.

I was also one of those people.

My mom was in the Army so we moved around a lot and for a while, there was a time we lived in Jamaica with her relatives when she had to deploy.

Jamaica was beautiful, and our relatives were nice for a while... looking back my sister had a harder time than me. I always knew that.

But it was finally today when I scrolled these comments that it dawned on me.

It's because she had a harder time than me, that she always dismissed my depression back then, that even to this day when I try to talk about my anti-social, not interested in people, self-sabotaging unconscious habits that she used to respond impatiently, chalking my different stories up and writing them off as the same thing.

When we moved away from Jamaica, she was free to be happy, make friends and live her life as she pleased. She had always been strong.

But I had always been sensitive. Looking back, I'm not sure what I was sad or depressed about, when I was in high school I have an idea but in middle school? When we lived in Germany? It was just feelings, probably delayed feelings that I never addressed back in Jamaica, those feelings of being useless, an idiot, all the insults had fermented.

I was taken out of the environment, but my self-esteem and mental state had already been shot, I didn't want to be around people. PERIOD, there were times I even skipped school. In Germany, I was actually comfortable being alone, but when I returned to the states, had to attend school with some of the kids I once knew from elementary. That was the saga of self-consciousness and anxiety.

To move on was easier said than done because I wasn't aware that the insults hurled at me had convinced me I was worthless. Have you ever lost so much confidence in yourself that you double guess yourself even when you know you're right? Have you ever known what to do, told someone repeatedly no but when they continue to pester your brain glitches and you give in because you're no longer aware of what the person pestering you for is something dumb? That was me. Prone to making mistakes always incompetent and forgetful. Branded fool.

I'm 20 plus years now, why do I still have the same fears? Why do the same things still bother me? Part of the reason for that I realized that when I'm stressed out, I become forgetful.

Just because you're lonely, doesn't mean you are alone.

Just because your feelings get written off, doesn't mean no one cares about you. They're just at a different mental level. They're at level 30 while you're at level 3 because when you're depressed you can't think with maturity, you're too close to the problem. Your problems pale in comparison to theirs but that doesn't mean you don't have or shouldn't have problems.

They just don't understand why things so small can be a problem to you, they've been toughened by life so they won't understand and may even think it's a cry for attention because to them it's ridiculous.

It's embarrassing honestly. Being depressed is like being blindfolded while walking on a tight rope. We think there's a pit beneath us but it's just a sofa. Everyone has different approaches to trying to get us to take off the blindfold, and stepping down to sit with everyone else.

I'm not chalking up all depression just the coming of age sort.

Let's not try to pretend

Once upon a time, there was a girl who was depressed.