A World Where You Can't Escape

It's no secret to anyone that I have depression. I've been professionally diagnosed. I am on prescribed medications. I've seen therapists. All of these have been helpful tactics in keeping depression out of my life, and myself in my life.

I recently found a girl on Youtube who has Dissociative Identity Disorder where the brain fragments during childhood and creates different personalities or "alters" to hold traumas and protect the brain from knowing what traumas occurred.

While depression is very different from DID, I related to her in a way. Depression sometimes can feel like a different person inside your body taking over and making choices for you. For a while, I just thought that this is who I am. I will always be sad and I will always feel this way. It wasn't until after college and after I was officially diagnosed that I realized depression is not my personality. It doesn't define who I am as a person. With that in mind, everything began to get better.

Medications took away the thoughts that weren't my own. Therapists gave me healthy coping mechanisms to keep my brain healthy and happy. Dance gave me a physical outlet and helped release endorphins that increased the "happy medicine" in my brain. Surrounding myself with loving friends and fun, social activities helped keep me active. Working two, sometimes three jobs at a time kept my brain moving. While I am an introvert at heart, surrounding myself with friends and other activities outside of the house helped me thrive and live a happy life despite having what felt like a dark demon living in your brain.

Then, the coronavirus set the world on fire. Suddenly all the things that made me healthy and happy, came to a screeching halt. Americans were being told to stay in their homes. Do not socialize or be in close contact with anyone outside of your household. It was as though the world that once was inside my head had seeped out through my ears and I was now living it in reality. What the world is telling all of you is what my brain used to tell me.

We all now feel this won't end. We all now feel like there is no light at the end of this tunnel. We all now feel that hope is lost and life will never be the same again. This... This is what depression is like. You are all living this as a reality. I have lived this inside my head for eleven years and now I am living it inside and out.

Now more than ever I think it's important to remember that our mental health is as important as our physical health. Losing my jobs has caused me to lose hope. I've began retreating to old habits and old places I used to use when I didn't know what depression was. I have no reason to get out of bed so I sleep until 1pm. The darkness at night feels comforting because it's what the inside of my brain looks like so I stay up late, thinking about all the chaos happening in the world. Yet I'm strangely calm. Is it because I have lived this life before for so long that I just know what to do now? I don't see a point in getting up. I forget to take my medications now. I'm losing touch with who I am and becoming the person I used to be. That is even scarier to me than the coronavirus.

I am trying so hard, harder than a lot of people think, to keep myself from falling into a place that I can't get back out of. In January of 2019, I had a suicidal thoughts scare. My doctor and I discussed it, and I switched medications. I can't switch medications to change what's going on now. All I can do is do what everyone else is: take one day at a time. For me, that's the hardest thing to do. Part of keeping depression away is having things to look forward to, no matter how close or how far away they might be. With all the uncertainty and unknown, it's nearly impossible to look forward to anything. It makes me feel like I have nothing to live for anymore.

Writing has been keeping me calm. Trying to switch up my routine every day has been keeping my brain active and my thoughts off the panic in the world. I'm not scared of the coronavirus. I'm scared of my depression. I always have been. I have fought and defeated him in so many different ways but he always comes back.

I suppose this is just another battle to fight, and in the end, I know I will win.