Do I Have Depression?

In today's world it seems like everyone is suffering from some sort of mental illness. How did we get here and what do we do next?

waking up different

I will never be able to pinpoint the day that my brain turned against me. That is a memory that has been buried so deep that it will never be unearthed. I just realized that at one point I stopped being excited to wake up. You don’t wake up one day and realize you’re depressed. You wake up one day and realize you’ve been depressed all along. And there’s no way to respond to that with anything other than that sucks. And it does suck. There is no need to romanticize it. It sucks that anyone has to wake up and realize that they are depressed. 

But then after a while, you start to wonder if you truly are depressed. Everyone will tell you that you’re just sad and the sadness will pass. But it wasn’t just sadness you felt. It was a hole, a hole that continued to grow no matter how much you tried to fill it. And for the next few years of your life, your only goal would be to fill that hole. But you didn’t know that yet. All you knew was that this feeling was different and you hoped it would go away. 

Life still went on though. You continued to wake up every day like normal. You continue to have conversations with other people like normal. Despite all that, something big had already changed and this change would follow you for the rest of your life. And for the rest of your life it would be about getting rid of this change, it would be trying to find that person you were before that emptiness. 

But before that all happens, you need to figure out what it is that you’re going through. What is this new emptiness inside of you? So you begin to search. You search online about everything you’re feeling and it all leads to one answer. Depression. But how could you be depressed? That doesn’t make sense. You were so happy before, there were just some bad things that happened, how could you be depressed just because of that. So you did the only thing that made sense, you ignored the emptiness. You continued to live life as usual and pretended that there was nothing wrong because there was just no way you’re depressed. You weren’t someone who was just sad, there was so much more to you so there was no way you were suffering from depression. 

But no matter how much you tried to ignore the emptiness, it was still there in everything you did and soon it took over. And it was at that point that you had to accept the truth, you were now someone who suffered from depression. 

so now that i've accepted it, how do i feel?

Horrible. Depression is a horrible feeling that eats at you with every breath you take. It's the silent killer that is honestly not that silent in your mind. To wake up every day not knowing if you'll survive is honestly an exhausting way to live. But this is your new life and you have to accept that. So I did, which much annoyance. Truthfully though, I don't think I really did at that point. But honestly, when did any of us? I don't think any of us really accepted it when it happened.

The feeling of forced acceptance probably sat with you in anger for a really long time. I know it did for me. The anger of having to accept that you would now face years of fighting your own brain to survive.

what's next

So now you need to decide what's next. Do you continue to live in denial and hope that eventually it goes away? Or do you decide to fight with everything you have and hope that one day things will get better. I choose the second one and truth be told the latter has not happened yet. I am currently going through the darkest times I have ever been through. I don't have the answers yet even after 10+ years of fighting. There is nothing easy about fighting to live and for anyone to tell you otherwise is disrespectful to the fight you fight everyday.

I honestly do not have the answer of what's next, but I really hope we figure it out together.

Signing off,

Erika