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This, all of this
11 years ago
General
Found on the Web
Depression is humiliating. It turns intelligent, kind people into zombies who can’t wash a dish or change their socks. It affects the ability to think clearly, to feel anything, to ascribe value to your children, your lifelong passions, your relative good fortune. It scoops out your normal healthy ability to cope with bad days and bad news, and replaces it with an unrecognizable sludge that finds no pleasure, no delight, no point in anything outside of bed. You alienate your friends because you can’t comport yourself socially, you risk your job because you can’t concentrate, you live in moderate squalor because you have no energy to stand up, let alone take out the garbage. You become pathetic and you know it. And you have no capacity to stop the downward plunge. You have no perspective, no emotional reserves, no faith that it will get better. So you feel guilty and ashamed of your inability to deal with life like a regular human, which exacerbates the depression and the isolation.
Depression is humiliating.
If you’ve never been depressed, thank your lucky stars and back off the folks who take a pill so they can make eye contact with the grocery store cashier. No one on earth would choose the nightmare of depression over an averagely turbulent normal life.
It’s not an incapacity to cope with day to day living in the modern world. It’s an incapacity to function. At all. If you and your loved ones have been spared, every blessing to you. If depression has taken root in you or your loved ones, every blessing to you, too.
Depression is humiliating.
No one chooses it. No one deserves it. It runs in families, it ruins families. You cannot imagine what it takes to feign normalcy, to show up to work, to make a dentist appointment, to pay bills, to walk your dog, to return library books on time, to keep enough toilet paper on hand, when you are exerting most of your capacity on trying not to kill yourself. Depression is real. Just because you’ve never had it doesn’t make it imaginary. Compassion is also real. And a depressed person may cling desperately to it until they are out of the woods and they may remember your compassion for the rest of their lives as a force greater than their depression. Have a heart. Judge not lest ye be judged.
There's nothing much else. For years and years. Maybe I should seriously get on antidepressants before I just completely sleepwalk my life away like this.
It sounds more like you are bummed out by how repetitive and dead end certain jobs can be.
This is coming from personal experience.
There are two major types of depression:
1)depressing depression from shit just being shitty, this can be alleviated by finding some way to cope or change things up and end the thing that is causing said depression. Usually involving some sort of lifestyle changes or counseling.
2)Chemical depression... Which is much more serious. This is usually the people that are depressed and have no real reason to be depressed or don't even know why they are depressed, usually because of chemical imbalances or genetics or even some diseases. This type of depression is barely understood and pretty damn hard to treat, especially if it is tied to something like bi-polar or manic depressive disorder, and requires careful monitoring, lifestyle changes, and doctors that give a shit about you and not just their paychecks.
For me, depression sometimes gets better when things get worse. You may want to consider taking a few risks. Look for cheap fun. Don't contemplate it too much. Just don't lose your job.
You could try moving. Go visit the animal shelter if you can get a cat. Get drunk with a friend. It's like a hedge maze with no exit, you have to bash your way through.
I'm not exactly what one may call an optimist, so I don't know what to really say to you since I don't know your whole story... All I can say is look for the good things in life and just try to run with them even if it is something as simple as a good meal, or a nice nights sleep or such.
I can attest.
The worst part is seeing it, knowing it, being ashamed of it, any yet not being able to damn thing about it. Its sickening, and an awful sinking feeling. It does ruin lives. I remember joy, but can't seem to find it any longer. I seem to have lost my will as well. Its terrible, and so is the ever-present ambivalence, and apathy that go with it.
We miss you on FM.