de·pres·sion

/di’preSHen/

Noun

1. Severe despondency and dejection, accompanied by feelings of hopelessness and inadequacy.

2. A condition of mental disturbance, typically with lack of energy and difficulty in maintaining concentration or interest in life.

I have suffered from depression for a very long time. I think about the last 11 years of my life and sometimes wonder why I never got help. Why didn’t I go to see someone or talk to someone? Why can no one see the pain that I am in? What is the root of my depression? What am I going to do to change the way I feel? These questions run through my head on a daily basis and even though I know the answers to them, I don’t know that I believe them.

1. Why didn’t I go to see someone or talk to someone?

—–I WAS SCARED. When I was younger I didn’t know what I was going through. I didn’t understand what I was dealing with. When I did finally realize what was going on I felt like it was too late. I felt at that point that I was a lost cause. I let the depression take over.

2. Why can no one see the pain that I am in?

—–THEY DO. I am just so far gone in my depression that I can’t recognize the people around me who are trying to help me. I find it so hard to get close to anyone and to open up to them. I’m afraid of what I have gone through and that if I tell people they just won’t care. I can hear them in my head saying, “Just get your shit together” or “Why can’t you just be happy?” They don’t understand what I am going through. Its just not that easy. There isn’t a happy switch that I can just turn on and make everything better. So I find myself pushing away the very people that would love and support me. I don’t let them in because I don’t want to make them suffer. Why should I push my problems onto them? I am the one that is going through this. They don’t need the burden of my depression put on them. They have their own problems that they have to deal with.

—–Thinking this way has lead me to shut a lot of great people out of my life. This has also made me extremely lonely, which has only deepened my depression. I often lay awake at night thinking about the people that have tried to help in the past, and the people that are trying to help me today. I get angry at myself for pushing them away but at the same time I feel relieved that I didn’t burden them with my mess. I can’t just expect people to help fix me if I can’t even fix myself. The other side of that though, is if I could fix myself then none of this would be an issue anyways. I am so torn in my head on what I should do, that I just don’t do anything. So it is all just a vicious cycle in my head.

—–I have a hard time recognizing the people that are trying to help me also. By the time I realize that a person is trying to help me I have pushed them so far away that they don’t want to help anymore. I DON’T BLAME THEM FOR THAT! I wouldn’t put up with me being that way either. So I am sorry to those of you that were/are trying to help me. I wish that I could change what I have already done, and what I will most likely do in the future.

3. What is the root of my depression?

—–I DON’T KNOW. There are certain things in my life that I know have deepened my depression, but I don’t know what the root of my depression is. For as long as I can remember I have always been depressed. It has just slowly gotten worse over the years. When I was younger I just didn’t know that what I was going through was depression. All I knew was that I felt sad a lot of the time and that I didn’t see other kids sad like me. So I just kept quiet about it.

—–The first time I can really remember feeling this way was in middle school. I was bullied about my weight a lot in middle school and I never knew how to handle it. It was relentless. I dreaded going to school every morning. I knew that when I got there that kids were going to make fun of me. They were going to call me fat. They were going to say that I shouldn’t be allowed to go to school with them, that I was different and didn’t deserve to be there. This happened so often that I actually started to believe it. I thought that I was worthless and that I didn’t belong there. I thought that I was beneath them, that they were somehow better than me. It wasn’t until I got to high school that I realized that I was wrong about myself. The kids that had bullied me in middle school had all gone off to a different high school and I got a chance to start fresh.

—–While I was depressed in high school I at least had people around me who didn’t make fun of me. I had huge self body image issues and luckily no one I was around cared about that. I actually had a chance to feel accepted. The problem was that I was still caught up in the way I felt from middle school. It was so ingrained in my head that I wasn’t able to accept their acceptance of me. I got the feeling that they were only being nice to me out of pity and I started to resent them for it. I didn’t need their pity! I didn’t need them to feel sorry for me! All I need was for them to truly like me for me. This is where I really started to push people away. I was so messed up in my head that I couldn’t see that they really did like me. They really were trying to be my friend, but I was the one who couldn’t accept that. I had trained myself to believe that I wasn’t good enough to have friends.

—–Sure, I had people that I called my “friends” but I know deep down that I never truly thought they were. I look back now and think about how I probably treated those people, and how much I wish I could go back and change the way I felt. I feel like all I did was live a lie. I made up all sorts of stories and lies just to not let people get close to the “real” me. I couldn’t let them get close because I thought they were just going to abandon me anyway, and they ended up doing just that. I had prepared myself for it though. I had already pushed them away. I mean they weren’t really my “friends” anyway, right? WRONG! I was just to messed up to see that.

4. What am I going to do to change the way I feel?

—–I did finally breakdown and go talk to a doctor about the way I was feeling about a month ago. He gave me some medicine and said that it should help me. I haven’t noticed a difference though. I still feel the same way I was feeling. I still have issues sleeping at night. So I don’t know how I’m going to change the way I feel. I do go back to the doctor again this week to talk about the way I have been feeling. I know this recovery will be a slow process, but I hope that I am making a step in the right direction.

Posted in Life

Tags: health, Life, medicine, mental-health