Depression is like alcoholism—- vastly underreported and under treated in our population. It wrecks families. It clouds decisions. It looses jobs. It goes to parties where it’s ignored or made jokes as its expense. It leaves you convulsing on the ground. It requires help.

It is cyclic for most of us.

Even though there’s a lot of “us” in depression because of the problems you begin to cause for the people in your life: depression involves a lot of “self.”

There’s a fair amount of selfishness: you are momentarily only worried about you’re feelings and how things affect you. You think suicide’s an option in your selfish mind, “because it would just be easier.” Easier. for. you.

There’s self-centeredness: once again, it’s always about you. You can’t wrap your head around anyone else’s feelings. You don’t pick up the house but can’t understand why your husband’s upset with you. Your employer thinks you are a flake because you have these moments where you commit yourself to a task and then give up, failing to complete things correctly. Then you freak out and go AWOL— with a doctor’s note in hand—compounding an already bad situation. They remember how you were before you were sick and seemingly justifiably they expect that level of performance from you. Your family that doesn’t physically live with you doesn’t see you for days or months. It’s not that you don’t enjoy their company, or their yours, you just don’t have the energy to engage with anyone else. They watch you take horrible gambles with your mostly fragile health and all they wait is for the phone call. They phone you worried when you aren’t at work on time, “I’m sorry honey, I was just worried that you were sick again.”

Self-hatred: you just look in the mirror and determine that getting better isn’t something that’s worth it. Your clothes are wrinkled. Maybe they’ve been washed but you didn’t feel like folding or hanging them. You don’t brush your teeth or your hair—throwing it back into a messy ponytail. You don’t care about how you look. You wear the same pair of jeans to work all week. You just come undone.

So you self-destruct: you quit sleeping. You’re agitated by the least little mishap. Small things like a misplaced item will ruin your day. You start to mark things as “good” and “bad” like days on a calendar, drawing x’s through your “bad” days. Pretty soon all you’ve got is black streaks of X’s on your calendar.

This is my disease. Me. Mine. I am going to take ownership of it because the only thing that this can all be traced back to is ME. And I’m the only one that can fix it.

Posted by Lux on 07 March 2008 at 7:37 PM | Permalink