Please note: If you are under 16, please speak to a parent or guardian before reading. If there’s one thing depression is good at, it’s isolation. It’s depression’s ability to make you feel like you’re behind a wall, empty on the outside and sobbing on the inside, and so alone because no one can see the truth or hear the truth. No one can look past the mask you wear to simply survive the days and understand that you’re not really okay. But depression isn’t actually rare and we often have more people than we think in our lives who are willing to support us if we can break out of our cage and tell the truth.
“I’m not okay. I’m trying to fight my depression but it feels like it’s winning and I struggle to keep going. It makes me feel bad and weak and alone and I’m doing my best and I need to know that’s okay.” A while ago that summed up a Facebook status I did. I’m on medication and most of the time I’m more like the old me, but I have bad days and I have bad times. Often I just get on with life, despite my illness. It’s no different from learning to live with a limp or a dodgy stomach. I don’t talk about it a lot because it is what it is and the last thing I want, that anyone really wants, is to be a burden or a constant downer. But I had hit a hard time, and finally a last straw broke my back and I posted a status essentially apologising for the fact that I was no longer able to hide that I was hurting. I’m not sure what my purpose in writing it was except as a catharsis perhaps. I don’t know what I was expecting but I suppose I was hoping a friend or two might tell me that they cared about me. I guess I just wanted to not feel alone. I was taken by surprise though by the response I got. Within a short time I had comments popping up. ‘I’m sorry to hear that’. ‘Hugs’. ‘I love you’. ‘If you need to talk just message me’. ‘Here’s a link to a site that helped me before’. None of them judged me. None of them gave me some cliché about ‘just smile and it will get better’. There were some that said it would get better, but it always came with the comment that until it did get better they were there for me. The comments weren’t solutions to my illness or a magical cure that made me ‘happy’ again. I hadn’t been expecting them to be. They still meant the world to me. All of a sudden I wasn’t actually alone, even if I hadn’t really been alone anyway. Every message meant more than I could have expressed because every single one was a stone to weigh things more in my favour. They were all strings pulling me back from an edge I didn’t really want to be standing on. The thing is, no one can fight depression or another illness for someone. I don’t get to get tired and tap out, or tag a friend to jump in and take over for me. This depression is my battle. What these friends do, when they tell me they love me and they are seeing the fight and they won’t leave me to fight alone, is to stand on my side and cheer me on. They are my supporters, they bring my spirit refreshment when I’ve been knocked back. They wipe away the sweat and tears and push me back to my feet and somehow they give my legs the strength to hold me up; or maybe they hold me up when I can’t do it anymore. They don’t leave me in a wasteland to crumple in an incorrect belief that no one cares if I fall. That’s what depression wants me to believe. It wants me to think that I’m on my own, an island. It wants me to think that if I lose the battle, no one will care. It wants me to think that my life is negligible. That it affects no one but myself. If that’s the case, then it doesn’t matter if I give in, does it? It doesn’t matter if I hurt myself, or even kill myself, because no one will notice. It won’t hurt anyone but me and somehow depression tells me that is okay because at least the battle will be over. And sometimes I’m very, very tired and I do want it to be over. So when I get the courage to show people the struggle behind the mask, when they respond so tenderly and openly and lovingly, they are taking away depression’s greatest weapon against me. They are saying that I matter, that it matters that I am in pain. They are saying they would grieve if I lost the battle. They are offering to watch with me through the darkness until the morning light finally finds me. Friends can’t make the depression go away, but they should never underestimate how much power they have to weigh the odds in a sufferer’s favour. The difference between feeling alone and knowing that you have people in your corner can be the difference between whether someone makes the choice to be around tomorrow or whether they forfeit the fight. I'm sorry, that the depression is back. I know you don't like talking when you feel like this. I'm here if you need to talk, I'm here if you need me. What more can anyone offer? Depression is a bitch. It is invasive, destructive. It warps the world, turns everything that is good and beautiful to crap. I hate it. When I am in it, I allow it to gently hold me, to caress me and tell me I am worthless. I allow it to pull the blanket over my head and wish the world away. I am lucky. I know my depression, and I have an amicable enough relationship with it. I know if I am kind to myself and ignore the thoughts that depression gives me that it will go away. But this is just because I am lucky. Lucky that it is a gentler version that lives with me compared to the monster I have seen other people have to deal with. I wish I could carry your depression for you, wish I could take all the depression in this world, bury it in concrete, end it for ever. But I also love the days when my depression has passed. The blueness of the sky. The constant relief to have my own thoughts dominating my mind, to not have to keep gently ignoring those negative, paranoid, self-hating ones. The contrast reminds me what it is to live. Friends are always there and I find it a miracle that they just see me, whatever I am seeing. No matter how huge the depression is for me, they just see how it is weighing me down, covering me. They know I'm still there. Still the same. Even when i forget who I am. When I feel myself simply as a lack. An absence. Depression is not who I am. I write to myself, reassuring words. Words to bring myself back. Depression is not who I am, though it effects how I behave And how I think It is a circus mirror through which I see myself, bent and distorted And assume that this is the only reflection that others can see too And assume that this is influencing their thoughts about me But I do not know I am looking in a distorted mirror I think they are seeing the truth But depression is not me. It is not who I am. I am not a howling act of melodrama Nor a damp rag, limply hanging over the clothes line forgotten in a drizzling rain I am not a bringer of doom sent as a promise of misfortune Nor a blank gap in the air When will I let myself be? My friends let me be. They tell me to phone if I need to, they don't need to hear the things in my head to see the person I am. I am lucky. My depression is mild, it is fleeting. My friends are good, and loving and kind. Depression does not like it when I am grateful for these things. It is fed by guilt and envy, jealousy and pride. By the need for external validation, by adrenaline. It's best friend is anxiety. So I am forcefully, consistently, assertively grateful. And depression comes less and less often, with less and less force. I do not have the answers, and like all friends of people with depression I wish I did. I wish I could take all the depression away and bury it. But I am glad for the experience, of walking with the black dog because I know where you are now, my friend who is having such a horrible dark time and I know that you don't need to see the hope, because I can see it for you. Like my friends see it for me.
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AuthorThe Kick Back Club is a collection of written works on friendship and mental health recovery Archives
February 2016
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