I think I've had depression for about 2 and half years now, at the very least. I only seriously contemplated suicide for the first time a couple months back. I still think about dying but I think I've moved on from being in the place where I considered doing it by my own hand. That was a really, really low time for me. The worst I've been in all my eighteen years of living, I believe.
I'm better now, these past couple of weeks, than I was then. Something still hangs constantly over me, but it's slightly easier to forget about it at the moment. I have lot's going on socially, and that helps I think -- when you have things to do, especially with friends you like. It's always worse when you're left alone.
I think I must have had it when I was in primary school too. I remember being nothing but awfully down ages 7-8. I was unhappy with friends and the way my brain worked. It could have just been unhappiness I guess. It’s hard to tell and hard to remember. I cried myself to sleep nearly every single night for over a year I think . . . which is much, much more than I do now.
What I feel nowadays is kind of different. It’s really weird because I can have a nice day, then sit down on my bed, do things on the computer, la-de-da-de-da and then suddenly, out of nowhere, a massive crying attack happens and it can last all evening. Then I'm lying in bed at night, and I feel like a rock ‘cos I can't really feel much at all. I'm bored of trying to feel anything else, and so I just lay there and don't even think, like I'm nothing more than a body, a shell. And I just wait to fall asleep. It can take hours and hours.
I'm not completely sure if I have it. I've taken dozens of online tests, including one from the National Health Service and I've always been completely honest, and it always comes out with a large percentage, indicating clinical depression, and the words: 'seek help immediately'.
I haven't told anyone that I think I have it. I guess because I don't think they'd believe me. I think my mum would probably even laugh. It's unfairly easy for me to hide how I feel. Once, my mum came home from doing a course about depression and she joked 'Do you have depression? Signs include sluggishness and difficulty getting up in the mornings, difficulty remembering things and an inability to make decisions . . . sounds just like you!’ and I laughed along. My mum’s great, but thinks her life is more problematic than most when it isn’t. If I try to talk to her about a problem of mine, she sees it as a competition and merely tries to top it with a worse problem of hers. She’s an ill woman, I know that, but sometimes I wish she wouldn’t remind us all so much. It saddens me that she doesn’t notice I’m unhappy.
My dad is an alcoholic and has depression. Like me, it’s not been doctor-confirmed, but he thinks he does, and my mum thinks he does. I think he does. He’s a sad and lonely man. He thinks I’m extremely happy. I think it may kill him to find out I’m not.
I don’t think any of my friends really understand depression. I don’t think anyone who hasn’t ever had it does. I definitely didn’t realise what exactly it was before; I only researched it when some suicides happened at my school. But it’s hard how to describe how it feels. Like JK Rowling once said; ‘It is that absence of feeling, that absence of hope. You don’t know you can feel better. It is so difficult to describe to someone who hasn’t been there, because it isn’t sadness. Sadness is not a bad thing, to cry, to feel.
She’s right, it’s not sadness. It’s not having a sucky time and crying a lot. It’s an illness. It’s a feeling – or lack of feeling -- constantly inside you, which affects everything around you. Things you once enjoyed aren’t as fun anymore. You feel part dead. I feel like I only get through days by going through the motions. I get up, go to school, go to lessons, laugh with friends, go home, make my sister laugh by being weird and silly, and then in the evenings I’m by myself in my room, and everything changes. I can’t hide from it anymore.
It doesn’t just affect you mentally though, but also physically. My limbs always feel heavy and my neck and shoulders often ache and I have intense and constant lower backache too. I went to the doctors about it and they put it down to anxiety over my exams. During the time I went I also had horrible stomach pains – it felt like my stomach was made of stone and I’d have very painful twinges around my abdomen and in my thighs. I was so convinced I was going to die that I started writing goodbye letters. But then in a week it just went. My periods also keep disappearing for months at a time. I thought it was something to do with my ovaries, but the doctors said it’s just anxiety. But I don’t think I was even anxious about the exams.
I was born with a virus in me, which attacks my immune system and makes it incredibly weak. It is triggered by stress, so whenever I am stressed, I become ill for long periods of time. Because of this, I fall very behind at school, and that makes me even more stressed, and so I’m ill within a few days of being back. It makes me so frustrated and angry, and my school teachers get concerned and impatient, and the students in my class don’t understand. They probably think I skive. I think it’s a definite factor contributing to how I feel about my life at the moment. I worry about the future, and what kind of job I could have when I’m ill all the time. And being ill so often isn’t pleasant . . . I spend a lot of time feeling sh*t and uncomfortable. I feel trapped by it, really.
Even though I no longer think I’m in danger of killing myself, I feel like I should tell someone. Friends are noticing something within me, but I don’t have anyone I feel like I want to talk to about it. I hate talking about how I feel as it is. My mum will think I’m being a drama queen, probably. My family’s going through a horrible time anyway, and I really don't want to add stress.
I don’t know what compelled me to write this. I didn’t even get emotional when doing it which is suprising. I’m okay right now . . . just tired, as always. I guess I just wanted to explain what I felt to someone -- it’s all been kept in my head until now, see and so this is quite relieving. To an extent anyway.
Just Another Journal About Depression
March 1st, 2011 at 11:44pm