On being depressed
I’ve been quite depressed for the past two weeks. Well, very depressed, really - the kind of depressed where I don’t feel like getting out of bed at all, don’t particularly feel like interacting with people (even the closest people to me), don’t particularly feel like doing work or reading or writing or doing anything but feeling really very sad.
I’m lucky, in a sort of way, because I was first diagnosed with depression, and treated for it, when I was 14 years old. That’s more than half my life, now, and all of these years of working on dealing with it mean that when I have a slump like this one I can sort of regard the feeling of being depressed as like an emotional head cold - reduce it to a set of physical symptoms that must be dealt with accordingly, rather than a sign of the end of the world. Despite the fact that feeling like it’s the end of the world is a key feature of the feelings, I carry on doing all of these things that I don’t feel like doing, and I muddle through, because you can’t stop your life for this; you mustn’t. But it does all feel rather tiresome and wearing, like the air I am moving through to get on with my life is gummy and thick.
I’m writing this now not as a plea for sympathy, or a cry for help; I’m coping well, I’m talking to the people who are close to me, I’m carrying on with the treatments prescribed by my health care providers and I’m optimistic that like previous slumps, this one will alleviate - I’ve learned from experience. Rather, I’m writing about this I think it’s important, once in a while, for people to acknowledge that they’re depressed if they’re brave enough, to make it a less isolating illness.
Those close to me often find it surprising when I admit to them when I’m feeling bad, because I make an awfully tremendous effort to hide it, to carry on with my life as normally as possible, because that’s kind of all you can do. But the result of everyone trying to push through like this can be a feeling that the world is a very uncaring place. And I hope that if any of the handful of people reading this are also suffering from an emotional head cold - or a case of emotional swine flu, even - it might give you a little bit of extra strength to keep carrying on the exhausting fight to know that even if it’s not always obvious who’s keeping you company, you’re not alone.
