Maudlin Thoughts

Sometimes I think I write characters who have so many legitimate problems because my own problems are so intangible. If I had heart disease or diabetes, there would be proof that I was ill. I would be able to see the symptoms. Instead, my sickness is in my head. I can't see those symptoms; I can only feel them... And I'm left wondering if the people I care about think I am making things up. Sometimes I wonder if I'm making things up.

Someone told me recently that I need to find what's making me so miserable and get rid of it. But I've had these problems for so long now that I have started to believe that what is making me miserable, what has me locked so tightly in fear and sadness, is that my mind is actually broken. Is such a thing even possible?

There is no one thing that has made me depressed. There isn't a handful of things. It isn't causal. It isn't even rational. There is only disease. A disease that no one believes; that few understand. Because unless you've lived through the terror, or felt the agony of watching your life, as you stand utterly helpless, fall to pieces around you, you cannot understand how painful depression can be. You can't understand how words cease to make sense, how actions seem always a way to hurt you, how you can be surrounded by people, people who genuinely care about you, yet you feel completely alone and hated.

Depression feels like dying. Every time you close your eyes to sleep, you wish you would never wake up. And then you do, and it hurts. You make yourself bleed just to remember that you can, that you are still human, even if you are soulless. And, dear God, you can't stop crying.

I think Kay Redfield Jamison said it best:

"Depression is awful beyond words or sounds or images; I would not go through an extended one again. It bleeds relationships through suspicion, lack of confidence and self-respect, the inability to enjoy life, to walk or talk or think normally, the exhaustion, the night terrors, the day terrors. There is nothing good to be said for it except that it gives you the experience of how it must be to be old, to be old and sick, to be dying; to be slow of mind; to be lacking in grace, polish, and coordination; to be ugly; to have no belief in the possibilities of life, the pleasures of sex, the exquisiteness of music, or the ability to make yourself and others laugh.

Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job, or broken up with someone. But these experiences carry with them feelings. Depression, instead, is flat, hollow, and unendurable. It is also tiresome. People cannot abide being around you when you are depressed. They might think that they ought to, and they might even try, but you know and they know that you are tedious beyond belief: you're irritable and paranoid and humorless and lifeless and critical and demanding and no reassurance is ever enough. You're frightened, and you're frightening, and you're "not at all like yourself but will be soon," but you know you won't."

I was, like Dr. Jamison, diagnosed with manic-depressive disorder. I have felt the opposite of the spectrum and can say with great sincerity that it is not worth it. I would trade every one of my manic episodes for any semblance of normality. If I never had to be depressed again, if there was any glimmer of hope that the horror was over forever, I would gladly give up the mania. Mania is fleeting. Even hypomania lasts only months. Depression makes every second feel like hours. And I will never get that time back. It's gone. I can't even remember most of it. It's a memory of darkness, like everything was cast with a vaguely gray shadow, punctuated every so often with my wretched misinterpretation of life actually proceeding around me.

This is the fourth time this has happened to me since Kelly died, and I'm only 26 years old. If there is any mercy in this world, I beg I get some time to heal before the next one hits.