Removing Toxicity

 Hi all, I answered a question on Quora that took a lot out of me but it also felt fulfilling to write.  You can see the text below, and a link to my profile on this page

What is it really like going through a deep, dark depression?

 

I have to admit, I’m intrigued by your question. I shouldn’t be surprised though, as many people I’ve encountered don’t understand “deep, dark depression” and that can be very painful for someone in the grips of this disease.

I remember when I was 14 and I had a friend tell me they had thoughts of killing themself. I was always self-confident at that age and I thought I could HELP just about anybody just by caring. However, I did what you should NOT do and gave them a whole bunch of reasons to love life and why there’s no reason to want to leave it.

Why do I tell you this story? It simply illustrates the me, BEFORE this degenerative process. And that’s what it is: degenerative, to a scary degree.

Things that you love, you might not love anymore. People that you loved, you can find the stupidest reasons to fixate on and end up hating them. Yes, there are some people, often the main catalysts for depression who might deserve negative thoughts more: there could be betrayal, breach of trust, etc. to start it off. However, NONE of these negative occurrences LIGITIMIZE depression.

In lieu of sharing old poems that I wrote in the grips of despair, it would be easier to just watch a “Film Noire” on a rainy night. The one that scared me the most was “Sunset Boulevard,” but everyone has their favorites. The films do an excellent job of capturing the hopelessness and spiral into misfortune that characterizes depression. My Film Noire teacher always repeated the phrase “you can’t win.” And that’s the pervading feeling in depression: you can’t get what you want.

Yet, let’s take a step back and look at this from the outside: let’s say a person in a “deep dark” depression gets what they want. What will happen? Chances are they’ll find something wrong with it. Or they’ll get what they want and still be unhappy. Depression is so scary because you feel SO hopeless that you start to think nothing can help. You are literally robbed of hope by your own negative wish-fulfillment, as we try to justify our own depressed state.

Now we’re going to get a little personal: and if you’re still reading you deserve it. I spent YEARS of my life with only two reasons not to kill myself. Those two reasons were 1) I could not BEAR to hurt my parents. Losing their son to suicide would break their hearts. Even if I was dead, I could not rid myself of the guilt I’d feel. If at ANY time, my parents said “I wish you were dead,” even if it was just in a moment of anger I MIGHT not be here now.

Second reason: (and for the record, many people can’t hold on to this reason-so I was lucky) I TRULY believed that there HAD to be a reason I was alive. Despite all the negativity, all the anger and hatred, there was always a part of me that WANTED to know WHY. Why was I alive? Why was I in so much pain? Why was I alone? Is there a bigger plan or purpose for me?

As much as I felt like a waste of space at times, a part of me still wanted to hang on to find out. So I did. And as I mentioned in another post: the end of depression was not the end of me: it was the beginning of who I always wanted to be.

This process is not easy, it’s literally an exhausting survival exercise. However, anyone who gets out of a long depression (I imagine) NEVER does not appreciate and value the beauty of life, love and happiness. We all know too well what life is like without hope. Those of us outside can say: “life is beautiful” and “there’s hope” but those in “deep dark depression” will likely feel alone and misunderstood.

You discover the hope after. Ten years later I was walking into my psychologist's office, and I see an old friend/co-worker walking out. Suddenly I remembered that she had suffered from depression too. I had wanted to help, and I had given her the card of my psychologist and told her how it really did help to talk to someone. I had almost forgotten this event until I met her outside of his office. One GOOD thing about depression: is it can be easier to reach people who are there.

[I have to put a disclaimer here: there are some people who are reportedly born depressed, or genetically predisposed to it. I have a relative who has been depressed since they were a child. Yes, I believe genetics play a factor (as well as many other things) but I cannot speak for these people. I imagine the “catalyst(s)” I mentioned, could be a lot smaller in order to set them down the path.]