Depression

The thing I’ve learned since I was diagnosed is that everyone suffers from depression in very different ways and it affects everyone differently. Some people think of it as dark clouds and rain, but you know what? I love the rain. I could literally stand in the rain for hours and be perfectly content. Some people see it as a creature that sits on their back, dragging them down. In this piece, I’m going to tell you all how it affects me and some of the ways I try to overcome it.

I suffer from depression and anxiety, both debilitating on their own. Combined they seem to carry more power. I’m caught between caring too much and not caring at all. I could be having the best day or night, having the time of my life when it hits me like a freight train and I just want to curl up into a ball in my bed and not move for days. But I can’t, I have to get up, go to work, and come home, acting like nothing is wrong.

I’m lucky enough to be getting help from a psychiatric nurse who is attempting to help me through this. I know she means well but I don’t think I can be helped. My depression doesn’t have a face, it doesn’t have a body, but it does have a voice. If we’re being honest, it kind of sounds like a posh, camp, English guy. I mean like Hugh Laurie or Stephen Fry or Mark Sheppard. It’s almost comforting now. I’m scared to get better because these feelings are all I have.

My anxiety is like a nervous talking dog that follows me around, reminding me of deadlines, worries, and insecurities. This one sounds like one of those characters with weirdly great voices like Wallace Shawn or Maggie Wheeler. Panic attacks may have varied triggers among different people, but symptoms stay mostly the same: shallow/ difficulty breathing, increased heartbeat, light-headedness, sweats or chills, etc. There are many ideas of how to treat anxiety attacks but not all of them are an ideal way to calm an individual. Most sites say to stay with the person, reassure them, and offer physical comfort or verbal praise. When I have a panic attack, the last thing I want is to even be in a room with someone else, let alone get a hug or meaningless praise. But even as I say that, that may be the way some people cope with it. And that is fine.

Depression hits me hard when it does hit me, and that’s okay. I probably do the wrong thing in hiding myself away from the world and locking myself in my room, music blaring and in bed reading fanfiction. That is my coping mechanism, because that’s how I’m most comfortable.

You are allowed to be depressed or anxious. Don’t let people tell you what your own brain should be doing or thinking. Don’t let other people get you down when you have an illness to do that for you. Honestly, if I didn’t use humour as a way of dealing with it, it would all get too much. Well, that’s all for now. I hope anyone who reads this doesn’t find offence or thinks I’m making a joke out of mental health, because that’s not what I’m doing at all. Hope you have a good day and keep going.