Depression and what it's really like

mookie OTM

this day is a dessicate moth crawling with baby spiders

(d)

kalidasa otm imo

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzs0irUxA51qg3mw1o1_500.png

<3 <3

I have come to regard all human attempts at connecting as basically disguised desperation.

Oh, and I bookmarked this thread. Translation: I'm getting honest with myself.

Oh man this one is SO me

http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lysasxRXW31r2m5c0o1_500.jpg

Can I just say: after spending the better part of a year in the blackest pit of existential dread and awfulness I've ever experienced and foreseeing no chance of ever feeling good or normal or hopeful again...I feel relatively good and normal and hopeful again. Maybe not all the way out of the woods quite yet, but definitely close enough that I can see more than woods ahead of me. It feels like foolishness in the midst of deep despair to tell yourself that you might actually feel better someday, but it's a belief that's worth clinging to and working your way towards, however slowly. Because it is an attainable goal, and it's kind of awe-inspiring when you get to the other side and fully recognize what you went through to get there.

I have come to regard all human attempts at connecting as basically disguised desperation.

I can't otm this, but I wouldn't object to putting it a little more softly. Maybe that attempts to connect are a comfort and a bulwark against memories of dark times and anticipation of future ones. Connection meets needs people have, that if they go unmet might make life darker and sadder, but it doesn't have to be desperation, and it doesn't even have to be disguised.

fuck you, happy guy

(j/k thanks for hope)

xp

thoughtcat otm

and yeah, i'm okay with human attempts at connecting whatever they may be. even if it's desperation that drives us, that's okay, cuz the alternative to connecting warrants desperation.

I can't say that this is a thing that will necessarily work for everyone, but the rope that was ultimately successful in helping me pull myself out of the morass was asking myself, "Do I want my life to be a testament to despair? Do I want to add to the sum of misery in the world? Or do I ultimately want to have some sort of positive net effect on the worl and those around me, if only by trying to embrace life rather than resigning myself to slow death?" It may sound facile on the face of it, but it's a thing I've clung to tenaciously and returned to daily to remind myself, even when things start to feel a little sink-ier than I'd like, why I want to continue working towards making a better and healthier and happier life for myself.

yeah, that's good advice. my problem is that the raven keeps on saying "nevermore" no matter what, so affirmations are like pissing in the ocean. nullity is v hard to argue with.

yob have a fine album called the great cessation. yob otm.

i v. much appreciate your empathy and suggestions (honestly!) but

It may sound facile on the face of it

yes

Wow, Deric, some of the entries in that series hit really close to home. Good find.

This one, in particular, cuts right to the point:

http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lrj5fjCTaD1r2m5c0o1_500.jpg

It may sound facile on the face of it

deep down, i'm pretty superficial

This one, in particular, cuts right to the point:

heh. pretty cheerful, actually. i see my friends as obvious members of a club that would have me as a member. it does not reflect at all well on them.

^ okay, that's only at my worst...

Beats thinking out there somewhere are your "real" friends, only they won't have you as a member.

desire for connection isn't (necessarily) desperate, it's some sort of biological hunger.

I think what I'm saying is that lately I either don't crave or have trained myself not to crave connection (especially not the biological kind).

i'm guessing this has not made you happy

Just socially anorexic.

Well, for the sake of context: up until a couple of months ago, I had given up entirely. I'd hit the wall a while before wherein I acknowledged that absolutely nothing meant anything, and that every human action not strictly related to survival was essentially a means of distracting ourselves from our impending mortality. I was reeling from a number of deaths and the subsequent loss of my home, my long-term relationship, and my job. I'd come around to the idea that there was a definite design for the universe, and that the only role humankind played in that order was fertilizer. I believed the Final Destination series of films offered a valuable lesson in just laying the fuck down when the universe had made clear it was finished with your ass. And so on and so on and so on. At some point, though, I started to acknowledge that these viewpoints, if expressed, might have a negative impact on people who were more hopeful and trying to live as strife-free a life as possible. And also that, even if they weren't expressed, this psychic poison would find ways of leaking out and affecting others. I didn't want anyone else to feel the way I felt. So I really started thinking in terms of my life as a legacy of despair. I was done, ready to just lie down and ride out the rest of whatever lay before me with as little resistance and, hopefully, as little engagement as possible, but my mindset started slowly changing the more I tried to view my situation from an outside perspective and the effect it would ultimately have on the people who I knew cared about me.

I don't know how well I'm articulating all of this because this is the first time I've put these thoughts together outside of my own head. Put simply, though, the more I thought about the possibility of living my life in terms of trying to bring at least a little baseline good into the world, the better I started feeling. I guess it might've been helpful to point out that I had legitimately given up all hope, full stop, as little as a couple of months ago. You can make a startling amount of progress towards making life feel worth living in a startlingly short amount of time.

that's an interesting description of a journey, dwh. i can relate, cuz i've been in and out of the depths myself, and though the cognitive scenery was different in my case (not as other-directed, for one thing), the basic map is similar. small steps leading to bigger steps leading to gradual transformation.

the reason that real depression and despair are so unreachable from the semi-positive point where you're at (and i'm afraid they are) is that darkness and light don't speak the same language. i often feel as though a creature lives in me, an evil thing that exists only to negate and in doing so to destroy me. when i'm falling, the creature's will overwhelms my own, so that it doesn't matter what my goals might be, or how i might feel about things. i say "i want to change", and i really do, but a deep down voice says "you will not", and that's that. there is nothing that cannot be made nothing, no loss or failure that can't be ignored on the way out.

sorry, that got kinda doomy at the end there

Yeah, dude, I get that we're effectively speaking different languages here. This shit wouldn't have meant a thing to me when I was staring into the void last year. I guess the best way to boil it down is that when you feel like you've lost everything or like nothing matters, at least there's still hope. Then when you give up on hope, it's like a cascading freefall without a bottom and just a vast expanse of nothingness in all directions. That absense of hope is the scariest or most numbing thing imaginable. But hope doesn't necessarily disappear forever even when you give up on it completely. It's kind of an imminently renewable resource but also one that we can get really good at repelling when we don't want to deal with it.

I do disagree, though, that I can't access that bleakness from where I'm at. At present, I feel (not to mix my previous metaphor too hardcore) like I've found a pretty solid plank of wood to use as a buoy, but I'm still floating in those waters and I can see that abyss below me. I'm just trying like a motherfucker to focus my attention on the plank because it's the thing that's saving my life and keeping me from making mesothelioma jokes to cope with the horror of consiousness.

the thing is, when you think about that all you have is a plank, and other people have boats, hope starts to feel like cold fucking comfort

when life gives you a plank, make planktonade.

sounds really delicious

Well, there's also some kinda ego dissolution-ish shit going on at present that I'm far less capable of articulating but which is doing a lot of the heavy lifting with respect to warding off my own personal darkness. My immediate response would be, "why should I care what somebody else is using to keep themselves from sinking as long as my method continues to work?" I'm starting to get a keen sense that most of the things that cause distress/anxiety/despair are intimately wrapped up in ego. I've spent an awful lot of my life doing pretty much what you suggest: comparing some aspect of myself or my life to something external and coming up short. But I'm starting to realize what a useless ego stroke that can be. When I take myself and my pwecious feewings out of the equation when trying to suss out a step to take towards positive forward momentum, I realize how much the satiation of my concept of self has been largely one hugely insurmountable obstacle in the pursuit of some level of contentment or inner peace. I'm really ready to get the eff out of my own way already.

I've spent an awful lot of my life doing pretty much what you suggest: comparing some aspect of myself or my life to something external and coming up short.

oh that wasn't a suggestion for what you should do, that's what sometimes happens and continues to make you feel like shit.

this is HUGE

http://www.cnbc.com/id/46581129/Mylan_now_selling_generic_version_of_Lexapro

the patent doesn't expire until march 14, but i guess forest labs worked something out.

I'm starting to get a keen sense that most of the things that cause distress/anxiety/despair are intimately wrapped up in ego.

Yeah, I'm wondering how many people attempt self-transcendence to alleviate depression.

I find it quite funny in a masochistic way, for years I obsessed/had panic attack over my job and now the problem is "real". Strangely enough I can cope better than I imagined. Thing is: whenever the world around me is in panic, I suddenly calm down and be strong (for a while anyway). Weird. OR rather, bit fucked up.

welp

Hang in there, Hoos. Do you have insurance atm?

sup

my temp job right now is enough busywork that i can lose myself in it throughout the day, but i come home so fried that all i want to do is sleep. then, inevitably, i can't--so i stare at the ceiling for hours instead, and that's when things get darker than i ought to let them.

doesn't help that the activist community i'm a part of, upon which i've relied for support emotional and otherwise through the last 7 months, is especially fractious of late (and that, even if they weren't, i'm too broke to ride the train to see them).

i owe the federal government several thousand dollars in taxes. not sure where i'll get the money. the nightmare that i'll have to move back to texas (into my fucking mother's house, without a vehicle or money) sometime this summer for lack of job opportunities is becoming increasingly real.

i recognize some of the contours of this darkness as merely chemical, and others as the product of undesirable circumstances; it's the combination of the two that's getting me down especially, and has my thoughts going unusually amiss. debt, solipsism, insomnia, fear, and alcoholism make for a helluva cocktail on top of my "legacy" brain chemistry concerns.

we'll see what comes of it.

i think i'm covered under my dad's insurance until my birthday in august, q

alcohol is a depressant, of course

and i should know

hoos we need to meet up for a coffee ASAP

ride it out, hoos...hopefully there'll be a change around the corner for you soon

virtual hugs are virtually useless I know but (hug)

Let me just say, HOOS, that I empathize deeply with some of the particulars of your situation. It sucks to be in the center of that cyclone (which I'm just starting to really inch my way out of), but the best you can do is put your head down and just push forward, one foot in front of the other, knowing that things can get better.

my totally cliché advice: 1. baby steps and 2. focusing on things you can do atm that could make you feel better

^^^^