MY DEPRESSED LIFE

Depression is something that shows itself differently for everyone. There is no one person, or one story, or one experience that can make someone universally understand truly how depression alters the lives of those of us who suffer from it. I can't make anyone understand how it is for everyone, but I can tell you how it alters my life, and maybe that will help people understand how all-encompassing it really is.

For me there are two main ways that my depression manifests itself when it breaks through the barriers I have set with the help of years of therapy and medication. There is the gut wrenching loneliness and near constant anxiety and then there is the checking out, the feeling nothing at all, the numbness. Sometimes I don't know which is worse, but I will try to explain both.

The Loneliness and Anxiety:

In some ways I consider this step one of when my depression spikes because it always seems to come first. But I don't consider it step one in levels of horribleness. Like I said above I really think that both ways my depression hits me are pretty awful and I couldn't say which is worse.

You know that feeling you have in your gut when you are about to and/or really need to cry. While that is what it is like. All the time. I could be laughing and having a great time with my friends, which I often am because my friends are great, and yet in the back of my mind I feel more alone than ever and I just want to curl up into fetal position and cry. But I never can. I can't go home and cry and then feel better, because it's not like there is something to cry about, or really anything to be sad about. And it isn't really sadness. It is complete solitude. It's when my brain tells me that I am alone, that I can't be loved, that no one really wants me around, and worst of all that no one will understand me.