Depression, huh? So you are sad all the time!

Well, I wish it was that easy…

Let me correct the thing first a lot of people think depression is like: You are NOT sad all the time. If it was just that, it would be not half as bad as it actually is. You don’t believe me? Then continue reading this blog. I mean it’s not completely wrong, sadness is a huge part of depression, but there is much more to it. Here is a short disclaimer, though: What I am going to write is just the stuff I experience(d) and/or the stuff other people experience I talked with and got to know. It’s not scientifically proven nor statistically accurate. Oh, and I think I did not mention that on previous pages: I am a non-native english speaker (writer), so I probably make mistakes.
With that being said, let’s get to it. I’m thinking of how I should start this but it’s really hard, because there is so much I have to consider and write down to give you a rough overview. Obviously I could just copy paste the symptoms from Wikipedia but I won’t do that. I guess I’ll just start with the 3 biggest things I filtered through my therapy.

One big component of depression is having fear or being afraid – of what you may ask. Well, sometimes you don’t really know why you are afraid in certain situations or on certain days. It’s just there. You can be afraid of challenges you have to face that day or things you have to do or people finding out how you feel beneath your “mask” you put on once you step out the door. Even getting an e-mail or a message from a friend can be scary. You don’t open/read it for days. And let me tell you one thing, waking up afraid as fuck of work and the things that are going on there every day is just demoralizing. Often times it’s being afraid of something in the future or the future itself. Honestly, when you are generally afraid of the future, watching the news nowadays is not a good idea imo. Every day you read about bad stuff and stupid shit and you get even more afraid on an even bigger scale. You don’t want to deal with anything anymore, because you are afraid.

A (german) book I read has the most accurate definition of depression imo. The book is called “Das Kind in dir muss Heimat finden” (roughly translated it means: The child inside you needs to find home). The author is called “Stefanie Stahl” but I don’t know if there is an english version. The definition goes like this: “Leitsymptom der Depression ist die Empfindung einer allumfassenden Sinnlosigkeit.” (translation: The main symptom of depression is the feeling of an all-encompassing senselessness.). Holy shit when I read that it hit me, I felt like she dove deep into my soul and wrote that sentence down. This is how I feel very, very often. Nothing matters anymore. You cannot change anything, the world is ruined anyway (being afraid of the future comes in very handy here). What does it matter if I go out today and do something fun? Tomorrow I have to deal with the same shit like yesterday anyway. Why should you do anything anymore if you feel like nothing makes sense? So you start to do nothing. And it got even one step further in my mind. I started to ask myself very philosophical questions. “Why are we here?” / “What is the meaning of life?” / “What is my role in this universe?” / “Do my actions matter at all?”. Please, please don’t start to ask yourself these questions seriously. You end up in a loop of questioning everything everytime.
I pretty much ended up in a state of emotional indifference but emotions are a topic I will address in the future.

The third big thing I want to address in this post is self-doubt and/or self-hatred. Yeah you pretty much hate yourself. You are your biggest critic in everything you do. It’s like you have a little “you” inside your head that tells you what you did is not good enough. After some time you start to believe that you are worth nothing. Who wants to deal with a piece-of-garbage-looking dude who achieves nothing in a world built on performance? Exactly, nobody! Furthermore, because you think you are worth nothing and nobody likes you, you stop caring for and about yourself and start caring for others. You forget your own needs and often don’t know what you want or need anymore but you definitely know what your best friend or your partner needs or wants. You don’t want anyone around you to feel what you feel so you start putting their needs above yours. If you behave like this long enough, you completely lose the sense for yourself. You don’t know how you are feeling or what you need anymore. You don’t even know who you are anymore! That can go hand in hand with a slight feeling of not being “there”. Because you lost sense of yourself and your needs you don’t really feel like you sit on your desk or are in the grocery store, you feel like as if you were somewhere else.
So basically you could say depressive people are the nicest people around (they are trust me) because they care so much for other people.

Well, that was it. My second post is done and I hope I could give you a glimpse of what depression is like. There is so much more to tell you, though. So stay tuned.