What it looks like to be depressed

What it looks like to be depressed

I understand it's hard to love someone with a mental illness. It really must be rather draining. Dealing with someone who is depressed and covered by the cloak of negativity and sadness is extremely hard, no one wants to be brought down. It's hard to have a conversation with someone who is hyper focused on the bad things in life instead of the good things. It's hard to hear someone talk negatively about everything even though they have wonderful things going on in their life. I'm sure there are times when you might feel as if you just want to shake them and say, “Why are you crying over that nickle when you have a million dollars in the bank?” It's tiring I suppose. Let's look at it from another angle though shall we? We have all been depressed at one time or another.

If you think it's hard to love someone like that close your eyes. Now open them and imagine life from their perspective. Don't you think the person wants feel happy and feel joy? Do you think they get some perverse pleasure being stuck on the negative things in life? We are not talking about a negative person (we all know people who like to bitch), but a person who's life is entirely tainted by this black cloud that casts shadows over them. Honestly, do you think they like being this way? Really? Every human being wants to experience joy and happiness, but people who suffer from clinical depression can't. Oh it can be helped by medication. So instead of a black storm cloud it's just overcast with some periods where the sun streams down and warms your soul. And those periods where you get to feel the sun shine on your face are few and far between and always hampered by the knowledge that the clouds will come back and steal the sunlight from you. It's just there out of reach, covered by the clouds. You may even be able to make out the sun, but there is no way that you can clear the clouds. Imagine living in a world of perpetual darkness and sorrow. Imagine reliving every terrible thing or mistake or perceived mistake over and over again. Then someone whom you love tells you that they are drained by your darkness while the sun streams down on their face. Imagine knowing that this person is living their life in the sun and complaining that the clouds that follow you around are hampering their constant sunlight. Imagine they point up at the sun, and say look it's still shining and it's beautiful, but you can't see it because from where you are standing the clouds are blocking it. They can't see the clouds, they aren't standing in your spot. They reach out their hand and say here come stand here, but there is a bottomless chasm that separates the two of you. It's a semi permeable membrane that they can freely cross and come to you and you can feel the warmth from the sun emanating off them, but when you try and cross you are stopped, just out of reach. No matter how hard you kick and punch this membrane stops you and you can't get there. You just have to wait for that brief moment on your side that the sun blares through. You hold on to the memory of that little stream of sunlight that pierced the clouds. Sometimes the gaps between sunbeams is so long your forget what the warmth of the sun feels like. You see you loved ones basking in the sun and aren't jealous, but thankful that they experience the light and you wish that you could join them, but the membrane keeps you separate. You can pretend and get as close as your can to them, ignoring the membrane and sometimes just for a moment you can join them almost. But just like a membrane it can only stretch so far and thrusts you back into the land of shadows and perpetual grey. It makes the fall even more painful knowing you were so close.

Now close your eyes again and sweep those images out of your mind because you can. Because you don't live on the wrong side of that membrane. Now open them and enjoy the sun. Feel it's warmth, radiating through your whole body. And think to yourself, at one point, those poor souls lived in the sunshine just like you. They are creatures of the sun forced to live in the land of grey. They were born into lush green lands full of chirping birds and beautiful flowers but sucked into the world of grey.

This is what it is like to live with depression.