Depression and what it's really like

But anyway, I identify with the feeling of nothing is wrong/everything is wrong. It usually passes, that's about all I have to offer with that one.

Being outside for a while every day helps for me, but ymmv.

There are plenty of environmental factors that go in to making you depressed, but i think in the end of it all, it's 100% up to you to snap out of it.

This week I'm making the supreme effort of suppressing negative thinking, something that has been dragging me to the worst depths.

I probably talk to you all more than IRL friends.

I don't have to meet at a noisy bar to visit with you. I can talk to you while I work. If we're in the middle of a conversation and I have to take a call, it's not at all rude for me to drop out for 20 minutes or two weeks. We never have to have that "So, man. What have you been up to?" conversation.

I dig my IRL friends. They're good people. Sunny thinks I'm just a social butterfly because I go out every six months and play poker or watch the Super Bowl. But what I do when I do go out like that is look at the clock and wonder how much time has gone by before I can get back to the house to see my wife and kids. I spent a good 15 years of my life doing nothing shit, and while it was extraordinarily fun, I don't miss a second of it.

It's funny. There are a couple of ILXors on here that live just around the corner from us, but they have never met 5-year-old Beeps in person. And they might be mine and Sunny's closest mutual friends. I don't know what my point is, except maybe to say friends aren't the be-all, end-all solution to loneliness. If anything, to be brutally honest, I felt more alone at times when I was surrounded by my friends.

I have no idea how people make friends after college.

This to an extent, but to an even greater extent, I have no idea how people keep friends after college. I've retained a small and steadfast few, but the majority of friends (even ones I've been very close to and thought would be around forever) have sloughed off of my life altogether. It's a bummer.

^^^ Yeah both the quote and Deic's new post are 100% otm.

otm Making new friends is cool, but i feel like they always kind of fall off the map and the old friends who stick around are the only ones that really matter.

I kinda feel like women are much better at putting in the work to maintain long-term friendships than men are.

Unless you are heavily, deeply involved in some kind of social scene. That really seems like the only way to make new friends. Over the past few years there are a bunch of people I genuinely liked that I really wanted to be friends with, but I've sort of detached from whatever scenes they were involved in and they just don't have the time to pursue anything outside of those clicks.

If I'm not really deeply involved in that scene and it's a primary driving force behind people forming new friendships, then I'd just rather hang out, do my thing, and let things happen naturally, if they ever do.

I kinda feel like women are much better at putting in the work to maintain long-term friendships than men are.

That's kind of a lazy generalization. Some people are easily convinced to take this kind of risk w/r/t making friends, and some people aren't. Some people have public personas that show up well in typical social environments, some people's talents lie in one-on-one conversation or quieter venues, or by works of service or whatever. Whether these people are men or women is p much entirely up to chance and some environmental pressures, but it's not like women have some kind of "making friends" stripe on the second X chromosome.

it def takes a lot more work to make friends after school / college but it is possible.

it is also true in a broad psychological sense that adolescence is a time of trying new things and expanding your horizons and middle age is a time of hunkering down and focusing on a few things that really matter

Also if it's about "putting in work" then all you need to do is DO THE WORK. There is no better or worse, there is only you did or you didn't.

Different friendships have different baselines, this seems kind of self-evident? There's always that person you can call after 6mos and they sound exactly the same and so do you and that can be great, that can reassure you that someone knows you the way you really are and can be an anchor for your concept of self, where you came from, whatever. But there's going to be some kind of minimum level of involvement for every friendship, and they will return friendship benefits at different levels, too.

i guess that's a way of saying its okay and natural to not want to live in a beer commercial and on a brain science level prob foolish to try since we are much more critical and discerning about relationships as we get older

i've def become much less concerned with having a big circle of friends and more w reconnecting with old friends and nurturing / deepening those long term friendships

if you have social opportunities at work you should grin and bear it and take them, usually you'll find a piece of wheat or two among the chaff

i tend not to take that advice myself

jon - have you discussed this with your wife? what's her take on it, like, she might have some insight into your(her) friends. It just seems weird to me that you have a "best friend" and you feel friendless.

Okay, I new someone was going to rightly call me on my generalization upthread, but it was drawn on my experiences watching my wife and her college friends work really hard to plan their annual gatherings (which they've been doing for 12 years now), its impressive and I know none of my male friends have that kind of stick-to-itness when it comes to social events.

I have talked with my wife about this a lot and we both come from a place where we feel like its really important to have a good friend outside the relationship. One, it gives you an outlet that can be distinct and separate from your family life, which can make for a nice break during the hectic day-in day-out. Two, its nice to have an option when your partner is out with friends so you can also go be with someone without sitting home like a lump. Three, although minor, its nice to just have someone to blow off steam about your partner's minor annoyances.

I have talked with my wife about this a lot and we both come from a place where we feel like its really important to have a good friend outside the relationship. One, it gives you an outlet that can be distinct and separate from your family life, which can make for a nice break during the hectic day-in day-out. Two, its nice to have an option when your partner is out with friends so you can also go be with someone without sitting home like a lump. Three, although minor, its nice to just have someone to blow off steam about your partner's minor annoyances.

Good, I'm glad! I was a bit worried.

Yeah, I didn't mean to gloss over my relationship with my wife at all. I'm just talking about having friends outside of that dynamic. I'm super thankful for her and the time we spend, it just bums me out that I don't have someone outside of that. For example, a few months before my son was born, she had a girl's weekend with friends. Despite many emails and phonecalls trying to set stuff up with people, I ended up spending the whole weekend putzing around by myself. It'd be nice to have someone to spend time with in those moments.

I can't imagine sitting down with another person to talk about my wife! that'd feel like a weird betrayal to me.

And in general, god it's hard being an adult isn't it?

Is there anyone here who doesn't feel like life is mainly a disappointed and weary sisyphean trudge punctuated occasionally and thankfully by ephemeral scenes of hygge with children, love, music and beer?

My special friend's name is Cynthia. We get along so great that sometimes, we hardly talk about my wife at all.

xpost

life isn't like that for dan majerle

http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1115090/dan.gif

I can't imagine sitting down with another person to talk about my wife! that'd feel like a weird betrayal to me.

I guess it depends on what you are saying, but I don't think talking about your relationship with another person needs to be that weird or some sort of betrayal. I'm thinking things like, "man, my wife and I got in a pointless argument last night, here's what happened, do you think I was being the ass?".

I've had good years and bad years. It's definitely hard being an adult, but having known sustained happiness at one point in my adult life (which, for the first 26 years of my life I never would have imagined possible) I believe I can get there again.

xxxp

anyway, i don't mean to make light of this thread because i go through my ups and downs for sure. i sympathize with what jon is saying. one of the lowest moments of my life was when my fiance dumped me, and besides the obvious, part of it was that when i left the room and just needed to talk to someone, there wasn't a best friend for me to call. there was no one, only the realization that all my friends were pretty much her friends. and even though they were all kind to me and i thought of them as my friends...anyway, you can guess the rest.

it's really fucking hard to make good friends.

haha, no, that gif is always appreciated.

I'm having serious problems these days and this thread is v helpful; y'all are lovely, kind, and good people.

And in general, god it's hard being an adult isn't it?

yes. yes. yes.

it f*cking is hard work.

currently, i'm surrounded by

every day demands of my wonderful, life enhancing, but still emotionally and physically exhausting offspring.

every day demands of a soul sucking job.

every day demands of your bills.

every day demands of ...

etc etc.

then your wife dies, and you realise all such concerns are mere buttons in comparison in dealing with all the above on your own, and having no-one to share that bottle of wine to wind down with.

summary : adult life sux.

then your wife dies, and you realise all such concerns are mere buttons in comparison in dealing with all the above on your own, and having no-one to share that bottle of wine to wind down with.

This is the kind of thing that makes me get so upset with myself for being depressed over seemingly trivial things.

i don't think it's worthwhile to beat yourself up over the proximate causes of your depression feeling 'trivial'? for one thing that leads to a vicious cycle; for another, well, it's true, life could always be worse, but the life you need to make more livable is the one you're currently experiencing, not any other hypothetical one.

seriously jon/vai etc. that was never my intention, and i'm genuinely sorry to have added to your troubles.

i have never subscribed to the pissing up a wall contest, and the post was never meant as such.

it was meant as an underline to the point that after years of wanting so called "adult life", the reality is that the f*cking thing sux.

c sharp otm - gotta take the good with the bad, in the endless chain of being there's always someone better off and someone worse off

seriously jon/vai etc. that was never my intention, and i'm genuinely sorry to have added to your troubles.

No no, you didn't add to my troubles in the least! It was one of those kicks in the ass that remind me that I need a little perspective from time to time.

kind of having some issues

i know some things that might help, but can't seem to manage them

not really sanguine about the whole thing

manage?

i think he just means accomplish, in a basic way? yknow. manage.

I'm sorry yr having a hard time, mp

sorry, i was obtusely asking what it was you were having trouble managing

mookie keep posting here, I think that is a step toward managing imho

^^^^

you know something that struck me about jon via chi's story is that i realized that a lot of my friends maybe have the same experience w/ me. like i am making friends with record store dudes all the damn time, probably because i spend all my damn time in record stores and i kinda have that record store dude personality (shocker). and those dudes, they like call me once and if i flake they never call me back. and actually a lot of my friends do this too, as well as a lot of people i connect to. and now i'm 35, and of my tight circle of five bros from HS four of them are on antidepressants and one of them is still totally mentally ill and living an unhealthy lifestyle.

i guess this is a really trite sort of "birds of a feather" story, but you never know if that person on the other end who isn't making that effort with you is doing it because they think you're an anxious depressed loser or because they think they're an anxious depressed loser! and so you might need to make an extra effort to reach out to this person because they might be in the same boat as you, and in fact if you "click" on the level of personality and you're a depressive person then there's probably lots of reasons to think you could relate on that level too.

No faster way to make friends than to commiserate about depression ime.

mookie keep posting here, I think that is a step toward managing imho

― quincie, Wednesday, May 16, 2012 3:53 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^^

― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Wednesday, May 16, 2012 3:57 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

PAGING

yes <3

paging one (1) Mr Mookie Proof

Mr Proof step to the white courtesy phone

"we're not depressed. We're on strike."

^^^ Dunno if this does anything for anybody else, but it gave me something.

i think there's validity to that. i mean, i guess it's unfashionable to be into laing (r.d., mot kd) these days, and granted, the way he lead his life was not precisely exemplary, but the idea that if one has trouble adjusting to a cultural/political environment that is super-fucked up then it should come as no surprise i think merits discussion

i mean the people that i most admire have seem to have managed to live outside in a way... like they don't even reference or particularly participate in the cultural touchstones that i guess are a given for most of us. which i think is an exceedingly healthy strategy. like if you can go deep enough inside yourself that you don't just reject those pernicious models in a theoretical way, but in very direct moment-to-moment fashion. i mean, in my experience we live in a world that would define everything for us, and i think it's important to step in and re-define things for ourselves. to live your life fully and properly as it was. because I think that a lot of what manifests as garden-variety mental health woes can be traced back to accepting others' definitions of what life should be for us, instead of engaging with those ideas on our own terms.

as it was

supposed to read "as it were". can this board get a "preview" function? or at least give the "add a post" section a more pleasing typeface??

This is the kind of thing that makes me get so upset with myself for being depressed over seemingly trivial things.

It was years (years!) before it dawned on me that depression is not a competition. Still difficult for me to process (along with allowing myself to be happy which is even more difficult)

hi