What Is Depression?

What is Depression?

Movies, television shows, and the media often depict depressed people as being sad all the time, or being very negative and mean people, or even violent and evil people who go on killing sprees. The truth is, Depression can take on many different forms. 

Depression can feel like nothing. It can leave you feeling void of any feelings, positive or negative. You feel numb. 

Depression can be crying in the shower because you don’t want anyone to hear you. 

Depression can be sleeping all day because you have zero energy or motivation to do anything. 

Depression can be not sleeping for days on end.

Depression can be smiling during the day, at school and at work, but then at night coming home and crying yourself to sleep because it’s hard to be strong.

Depression can be not having any motivation to do the things you love or to do the things you need to do, like take a shower or eat food or go to work or get homework done. 

Depression can be slicing your wrists open or your thighs because you just want to feel something in the never ending sea of numbness and nothingness. 

Depression can be drinking at all hours of the day and night because it keeps you from having to deal with your emotions and the pain. 

Depression can be your mom coming in your room to find you hanging from a noose in your closet because you just couldn’t take the pain anymore. 

Depression can be feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness.

What does Depression look like?

Depression is looking into a mirror and not being able to recognize who you are. The person staring back at you is a stranger. Depression looks back at you with dead eyes that once held so much joy and light. When Depression smiles or laughs, you can tell that it comes not from a place of happiness, but instead comes from a place of hurt and pain, but a smile and a laugh can be all the mask you need to cover the pain and hide it, because Depression makes you want to stay away from people so that you don’t burden them with your problems. 

What does Depression feel like?

Depression is feeling void of anything. You aren’t sad, you’re numb. You feel nothing, not even sadness. You try to enjoy the things that once brought you great delight but all to no avail. Nothing brings you happiness. There’s a heavy feeling in your chest, like a bag of rocks is sitting on your heart. You feel drained of everything; emotions, energy, life. You have nothing left to give to anyone or to yourself. Sometimes you do feel sadness, and when you do, it overwhelms you completely. It engulfs you, consumes you. And then you wonder why you feel sad, and when you can’t think of any “real” reason to feel sad, it only makes you feel sadder, and the vicious cycle begins. 

What does Depression sound like?

Depression is crying in the shower so no one can hear you. It’s lying awake at night, listening to the gentle snores of your partner and doing your best to sob as silently as possible so you don’t wake them up again like you did the night before. It’s the voices in your head telling you to end it all. The voices that say;

“You’re a f***ing coward, you don’t even have the guts to kill yourself! Just end it already!”

“You’re a failure. You’re a terrible human being who isn’t worth a d**n thing!”

“Do the world a favor and kill yourself already!”

“You’re pathetic! Just get it over with!”

“You know where all the knives are in this house. Just start cutting at your ankles and work your way up.”

“There’s a whole bottle of wine in the fridge, and you have a bottle of antidepressants. You have no reasons to stay, so just do it!”

What is Depression?

Depression is doing a Google search on “ways to kill yourself” and trying to find the best possible way of getting the job done. 

Depression is going to school and putting on the mask you have to wear so that no one knows that you are slowly dying on the inside. 

Depression is a slow form of death. Anorexia is a slow form of suicide. Suicide isn’t that easy, because your body overrides your mind’s desire to die. You can’t bear another second of misery, your instincts to breathe are hard to overcome, but your heart just refuses to stop beating. 

Depression is continuing to wear the plastic bracelet they put on your wrist when you get taken to the hospital after you said you were going to kill yourself and that you have a plan to do it, because you’re afraid that if you do take off the bracelet that you will do it. So you continue to wear it as a reminder until the day when you feel like suicide no longer an option for you. 

Depression is knowing how to be an expert at lying and faking it; fake the smile, lie about why you look so tired and sad, fake the laugh, and your automatic response when someone asks you, “How are you today?” is always to smile and say, “I’m fine, how are you?” because you can’t tell the truth. The truth that you’re not fine, you just spent your entire weekend seriously contemplating taking your own life, and that some days you can barely function enough to take a shower or eat or even get dressed. That you are so far behind in work or school that you know you will either lose your job or fail your classes, but you can’t bring yourself to even care about that, because what’s the point anyway?

Depression is feeling like you’re outside of your own body, watching yourself as you pour out the bottle of sleeping pills into your hand along with your antidepressants, then tossing them back after drinking the last bottle of Smirnoff and lying on your bed, waiting to drift off into nothingness.

Depression is ending up, again, in a psychiatric hospital, almost a year after your last visit.

Depression is lonely; you want to reach out for help, but you don’t want to be a burden on your friends and family, so you keep quit, silently suffering. 

Depression is wanting to get better but not having the motivation to do the things you’re supposed to do, like find a psychiatrist to help manage your medication or finding a therapist, because part of you doesn’t think you can ever get better. 

When someone asks me, “What is depression like?” I never get mad or feel offended. There are some people in this world who are lucky enough to have never experienced depression so deeply that they have thought about taking their own life. Trying to explain depression to someone who has never experienced it is like trying to explain color to someone who was born blind; they have never experienced it before, they have no idea how to process that kind of information. 

When someone says, “Oh, I know how you feel, I was depressed for a long time after my dog/dad/mom/sister/brother/cat/family friend died” or inset any other kind of sad event where people are allowed to be sad, no, they don’t know how I feel. I know they mean well, but, let’s face it, when a person experiences a loss, society allows them to feel sad, because that is... well, sad. But when someone with depression tries to explain why they feel such intense sadness, society likes to say,

“You have no real reason to feel sad! Your life is perfect!” Would you ever say to someone with cancer, “It’s all in your head! You aren’t really sick, just get up and start doing something! Stop being so lazy!” No, you wouldn’t. 

What if we started treating mental health like physical illnesses? What if we all realized that sometimes people get stuck in the hole that is their life and they can’t get out of it? What if, instead of shaming and stigmatizing people with mental illness, we accepted them and treated them like the human beings they are? We aren’t monsters. We just need understanding, love, and acceptance.