I think this describes depression better than I ever could[2] . I have always wanted to describe what it is like, but end up frustrated because all I can come up with is 'it feels like nothing', so I never wrote about it. It's worth a look if you know someone that is depressed, or you yourself are. I've had it on and off for about 15 years now, and there are some reasons for it, sometimes. Other times it just comes on suddenly. I'll be eating a grape or something and then I just feel it, or rather I don't feel anything all of a sudden, and for the next week or 5 weeks or whatever I'll feel like that for a majority of the days. The last few weeks I've felt it starting to 'creep up' which sucks major balls because the weather is getting so nice and now I get pretty much no joy out of it. Weekends I feel like less of a piece of shit, but it doesn't help much. The last two days in particular have been bad. I don't feel anything, just hollow, which believe it or not, is actually worse than feeling like shit or feeling sad or mad. I miss anger, it drove me at times. From the link in the first sentence:
And that's the most frustrating thing about depression. It isn't always something you can fight back against with hope. It isn't even something it's nothing. And you can't combat nothing. You can't fill it up. You can't cover it. It's just there, pulling the meaning out of everything. That being the case, all the hopeful, proactive solutions start to sound completely insane in contrast to the scope of the problem. It would be like having a bunch of dead fish, but no one around you will acknowledge that the fish are dead. Instead, they offer to help you look for the fish or try to help you figure out why they disappeared.
If my life was a video game that someone was playing they'd have hit the reset button and gone back to a save point when I was 18 or so, when I passed up a 150,000 scholarship for biochemistry to Clark. Or maybe when I was 25 and just getting settled into Boston and didn't have almost 200,000 in student loan debt and a dead-end career path. Unfortunately life doesn't have a reset button and decisions you make when you're 17 or 18 can impact the rest of your life, if not flat out ruin it. Eventually you run out of 2nd chances, or first chances and you're just painted into a corner with what you have. Maybe depression is a defense mechanism. If I looked at what I have done with my life over the last 13 years I think maybe I would have killed myself by now. Maybe not. Maybe looking at my life has left me feeling empty, hollow, and void.
I've thought about going on medicine, but honestly I can't afford it, I'm almost broke now, and will be within a couple weeks, and even before it's not like I had money laying around for copays. Even when I could I just...I don't know, I guess I never saw the point; magic pills don't make your life less of a pointless train-wreck disaster waste of potential. Do I really want to be fucking around with my brain's chemistry? It's already pretty shitty obviously, I'm not sure I want to throw a match in that pale of gasoline.
When it comes on like it has the last couple weeks, and this week especially I just sort of go on auto-pilot. I guess I'll try to explain now. I feel hunger, but it doesn't mean anything. What did I do when I was hungry and not depressed? Oh yeah, I ate. So I eat. Oh hey it's 5:00 or whatever, I go to the gym now. Auto-pilot to gym. Move weight around. Try not to make eye contact with anyone, especially the people that you are friendly with there. Because when you're depressed you don't really feel any emotion. But if you're blessed, you can fake emotion exceedingly well, like me. The only trade is it saps your energy and makes you want to curl up in a ball in the corner and die. So I work out, look at the ground, and hope no one sees me. Come home, eat again because that's what I did before. Remember that my employers are horribly unethical pieces of shit, several of whom probably need to be sent to prison. Start to write letter to state AG and monitoring agency in my field. Think of how many letters you've had to write the last few months because of the horrible unethical shit they're doing to others, and you. Remember how furious you were a few months ago and how the rage fueled those letters, and how people reacted to them. Realize there's no more rage anymore, just emptiness. Realize they've probably won because you feel nothing, like a cigarette lighter without any fuel left in it. Keep trying to write, flicking that lighter again, just a spark and no flame. Realize you don't care anymore. Because you don't have that feeling anymore; 'caring'. Stop writing. Watch a movie. I used to like these, right? Sit in chair. Go to sleep. Have awful dreams. Get up. Maybe I'm not depressed anymore. Nope. Still am.
I don't want to kill myself, I don't want anything really because desire is gone too. I don't think I'd kill myself even if I had desire still, because I just don't have the energy. I'm carried by inertia; eating, sleeping, gym, bird watching, those are things that I did. So I do them. Because I did them before. That's what I do now, things I did before. As far as the gym goes it's pretty shitty because I'm making some good progress, and I've never been this cut before this early. But just like that beautiful weather outside, it doesn't mean anything. It's just...there. Alright, I'm done writing for now.
And that's the most frustrating thing about depression. It isn't always something you can fight back against with hope. It isn't even something it's nothing. And you can't combat nothing. You can't fill it up. You can't cover it. It's just there, pulling the meaning out of everything. That being the case, all the hopeful, proactive solutions start to sound completely insane in contrast to the scope of the problem. It would be like having a bunch of dead fish, but no one around you will acknowledge that the fish are dead. Instead, they offer to help you look for the fish or try to help you figure out why they disappeared.
If my life was a video game that someone was playing they'd have hit the reset button and gone back to a save point when I was 18 or so, when I passed up a 150,000 scholarship for biochemistry to Clark. Or maybe when I was 25 and just getting settled into Boston and didn't have almost 200,000 in student loan debt and a dead-end career path. Unfortunately life doesn't have a reset button and decisions you make when you're 17 or 18 can impact the rest of your life, if not flat out ruin it. Eventually you run out of 2nd chances, or first chances and you're just painted into a corner with what you have. Maybe depression is a defense mechanism. If I looked at what I have done with my life over the last 13 years I think maybe I would have killed myself by now. Maybe not. Maybe looking at my life has left me feeling empty, hollow, and void.
I've thought about going on medicine, but honestly I can't afford it, I'm almost broke now, and will be within a couple weeks, and even before it's not like I had money laying around for copays. Even when I could I just...I don't know, I guess I never saw the point; magic pills don't make your life less of a pointless train-wreck disaster waste of potential. Do I really want to be fucking around with my brain's chemistry? It's already pretty shitty obviously, I'm not sure I want to throw a match in that pale of gasoline.
When it comes on like it has the last couple weeks, and this week especially I just sort of go on auto-pilot. I guess I'll try to explain now. I feel hunger, but it doesn't mean anything. What did I do when I was hungry and not depressed? Oh yeah, I ate. So I eat. Oh hey it's 5:00 or whatever, I go to the gym now. Auto-pilot to gym. Move weight around. Try not to make eye contact with anyone, especially the people that you are friendly with there. Because when you're depressed you don't really feel any emotion. But if you're blessed, you can fake emotion exceedingly well, like me. The only trade is it saps your energy and makes you want to curl up in a ball in the corner and die. So I work out, look at the ground, and hope no one sees me. Come home, eat again because that's what I did before. Remember that my employers are horribly unethical pieces of shit, several of whom probably need to be sent to prison. Start to write letter to state AG and monitoring agency in my field. Think of how many letters you've had to write the last few months because of the horrible unethical shit they're doing to others, and you. Remember how furious you were a few months ago and how the rage fueled those letters, and how people reacted to them. Realize there's no more rage anymore, just emptiness. Realize they've probably won because you feel nothing, like a cigarette lighter without any fuel left in it. Keep trying to write, flicking that lighter again, just a spark and no flame. Realize you don't care anymore. Because you don't have that feeling anymore; 'caring'. Stop writing. Watch a movie. I used to like these, right? Sit in chair. Go to sleep. Have awful dreams. Get up. Maybe I'm not depressed anymore. Nope. Still am.
I don't want to kill myself, I don't want anything really because desire is gone too. I don't think I'd kill myself even if I had desire still, because I just don't have the energy. I'm carried by inertia; eating, sleeping, gym, bird watching, those are things that I did. So I do them. Because I did them before. That's what I do now, things I did before. As far as the gym goes it's pretty shitty because I'm making some good progress, and I've never been this cut before this early. But just like that beautiful weather outside, it doesn't mean anything. It's just...there. Alright, I'm done writing for now.
