Depression and what it's really like

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

hey bro

sup

hey guys <3 u all for real.

oh hai mp

xxxposts hey how is a Hoos doing lately?

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)

Yeah, both pain and the ability to cope with pain are subjective and context-dependent. It's a valuable thing to recognize and sympathize with the intensity of others' pain, but there's no percentage in beating yourself up because you feel that your pain is somehow out of proportion with the source of your pain. Because we have no real way of knowing how profoundly others are hurting in relation to ourselves or how easily they cope with their own personal burden. All you can do is be empathetic but also deal with your pain as if it's a concern completely separate from what others are going through.

Still learning how to do this myself, btw.

I find it comforting to remember that emotions are chemical and physical states; it doesn't really matter what put you there, your feelings are real. If you feel like crap, you feel like crap. The important thing, imo, isn't the scale or perceived validity of your problems, it's what you're able to do to change your state of mind. Even that doesn't correlate to any kind of issue-seriosity scale afaict.

yeah, i think there is extreme pressure on people to be happy and successful. whatever that means.

which is kind of a weird thing to build a culture around, but i guess makes sense in a hyper-capitalistic mode of red or black

but i think statistics show that relationships are paramount in life. so for instance nigeria places above "happy" polls over the western industrialized usual suspects

"above in"

I want to preface this by saying that I am not suicidal, so don't worry. Don't call anyone, don't be concerned. I'm going to work in the morning, I promise. If for no other reason, I have a mother who I know cares about me so much that to take my own life would be to destroy hers. I won't do that.

Having said that:

I believe strongly that I really have ruined what chance at a life I had. I've had so many friends. Amazing friends, sweet people, hilarious people, genuinely good people. And there isn't a single one of them I can talk to tonight. It's not all in my head; I have rejected them, avoided them, and hid from them so many times that even the ones I have reached out to directly won't talk to me anymore.

I am the bad guy in this story. I didn't mean to be, but I am. I have done awful things. I have responded to the lowest lows in my closest friends' lives with silence because I was afraid of awkwardness. I have driven away the people who have loved me. I have fucked up beyond redemption.

Starting over isn't a real thing. Grace, in the absence of religious belief, isn't a real thing. I have to live with what I've done and haven't done.

I'm so fucking sad. I'm so lonely. And I deserve it. I went to school for an idiotic, narcissistic profession, one in which I have no natural skill and one for which I have no remaining passion. I'm so self-involved that I don't know how to cultivate relationships as an adult. I loathe the city in which I live. I have no friends. I have no one left except for my family, and every day my guilt about having chosen a career where it's impossible for me to make a living wage and live within a thousand miles of my aging grandparents eats away at me. I know that every day spent here, away from them, I will regret until I die. They raised me, and took care of me, and spent their whole lives making sure that I had everything I could want, and I can't even be close to them in their old age. I want to go home, but there's no way for me to do so and support myself. I can't even imagine figuring out a way to eek out an okay life for me, much less dream of creating my own family.

I'm so sorry. I can't express how sorry I am. I did everything wrong. I guess I'm just throwing this out to the world: I'm so, so, so sorry. God damn it I am nothing but contrite for my mistakes and I pray to whatever isn't out there to forgive me. I'm sorry.

no, you don't start over, you continue. you try not to make the same mistakes that fill you with self-loathing. you end up making some of them again, but maybe fewer, maybe less severely. you focus on doing more things you are proud of, fewer wrong things.

I forgive you. But it's most important for you to work on forgiving yourself. Like sarahell says, there's only forwards. One foot in front of the other, and try not to make the same mistakes again. Forgive yourself, and keep going.

<3

well

a) stop upstaging me
b) you're not a very convincing bad guy -- silence is maybe not helpful but nor is it evil
c) it's hard to make friends as an adult, i think, but it's also hard to lose them -- those ppl you've been through shit with will understand
d) you don't have to be with your grandparents all the time as long as they know you are thinking about them and loving them

are you . . . in nyc now? because there are drinks to be had

I have responded to the lowest lows in my closest friends' lives with silence because I was afraid of awkwardness. I have driven away the people who have loved me.

hey, i've done this thing! repeatedly. but it's not irreversible in the way it can feel, fwiw. if there's anyone in particular you want to reach out to/apologize to/reconnect with, try it.

i am also really familiar with the feeling of having done everything wrong, but the thing is, it's never over. i don't even mean that in a particularly comforting way, i just mean it literally: no matter how badly you think you've fucked up, you still have to wake up the next morning. like sarahell said, you change a few things that are within your power to change and you keep going. circumstances change, and also, just doing a few things that seem doable can make you feel a lot more hopeful. living with what you've done, as you put it, is easier than anticipating living with what you've done.

forgiving yourself all at once can be hard, but it seems to me that you're taking a lot more on as your fault than could possibly realistically be your fault. i hope that helps.

I have responded to the lowest lows in my closest friends' lives with silence because I was afraid of awkwardness. I have driven away the people who have loved me.

i have also done this thing, repeatedly. and i've also felt awful about it, but when i think back about those moments where i should have been more supportive, i remember that it was much more complicated than simply seeing a friend in pain and choosing not to be there for them. there were other feelings, many of them self loathing, like "he really needs someone there, but i'm not a good enough friend to be that person. i would probably end up making him feeling worse." i'm guessing that maybe it was similar for you. also, remember that lots and lots of people respond the same way (by withdrawing) to the pain of others. it's not a good thing, but it's common.

if there's anyone in particular you want to reach out to/apologize to/reconnect with, try it.

horseshoe otm. you don't need to stage a reverse intervention where you gather all of your past friends into one room and beg for forgiveness or something. but you could think about calling up an old friend that you haven't talked to in forever and just asking how they're doing, and if they live really far away (all of my old friends do), at least say that you'd like to get out there sometime and give see them sometime soon. stuff like that goes a long way.

anyway, i don't know you all that well nick (i don't know anyone here that well), but there are too many people i know that have the best of intentions and feel so guilty and sad all of the time, and it kills me. there are so many people that truly are assholes - let them be sad and guilty, you deserve better.

I have responded to the lowest lows in my closest friends' lives with silence because I was afraid of awkwardness. I have driven away the people who have loved me.

i have also done this thing, repeatedly.

Same. It's something I've been feeling increasingly shitty about lately. I've resolved to call at least two of these people this weekend so that I'm at least making an effort. I don't know if it'll work but surely it's worth a shot, right? Maybe you could do similar like everyone else has suggested. Hang in there, N.

Thanks everyone, I appreciate it. I should probably stop getting drunk for awhile, I seem to go down that hole every time I do nowadays.

I don't know if this will be at all helpful, but I've been on the receiving end of this recently. I have a number of friends who kind of shockingly retreated when I was going through a lot of rough shit (and, thankfully, a handful who have been my rocks). When I got to the other side of that stuff, though, I regained the perspective to remember that I'd been that guy myself in the past and that I retreated out of awkwardness and not because, y'know, "Fuck that sad sack". What I'm trying to say is that I'm not mad at those people who weren't around and I'd like to see/hear from them again. I can't say everyone in my position is gonna feel the same, but I think it's fair to assume that you haven't really alienated as many people as you may think you have. And some people may really miss you and want you back in their lives. Part of the problem is that you're trying to assess what's going on in other people's heads, which is a doomed pursuit under the best of circumstances but doubly so when you're not in the best frame of mind yourself.

saying much about things in my life at this point feels wholly silly. I feel like it's been a spiraling cliche of dead and dying loved ones, drugs, casual self harm; physical or otherwise, growing poverty, the growing inability to communicate or connect with people on anything slightly resembling a meaningful level, etc etc for years now. money is the worst substance on earth. if you're not white and not rich you're not going to school so you're not getting a job. even if I were to somehow get a job, I have no interest in perpetuating and playing into the grossly flawed systems that are in place; of course that's the only way one gets to eat in 20XX. independent media affirmed in me long ago that the world beyond myself isn't getting any better. suicide isn't a viable option either. problems abound.

oops~

feel better nick

http://bogglelovesyou.tumblr.com

what a kind owl

not sure the kind cartoon owl is qualified to give people advice about medication tho

that's great!

you guys are swell

I like the list:

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m57qkbl50I1rr4zq1o1_500.jpg

I should print that and stick it on the fridge.

I like that a lot

numbers one and three there partic otm in my experience

I feel like apologizing to someone every day helps too but tbh that's because I fuck up a lot.

Heh I always get told to STOP apologising for everything by my housemate :)

Ugh. Sorry guys, but that tumblr's advice is horrible. Putting a nicely drawn owl on it doesn't make it any better.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m15o73uOVk1rr4zq1o2_500.jpg

Anon, I don’t know if you’ve ever considered whether or not you may be asexual, or if you’re even comfortable considering that label for yourself, but either way, I would encourage you to look up one of the many asexual communities online! At the very least, it should be a comfort to spend time with people who will never tell you that you need to be in a romantic or sexual relationship in order to be healthy and happy!

jumping to a lot of conclusions here, asexuowl

sorry this was the question

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m15o73uOVk1rr4zq1o1_500.jpg

Cool list, partic the owl. Damn, looks like the owl was already made light of. Anyway, hardest one for me was the last, kindness from others didn't exist in my brain so it could never be recognized. Totally mindblowing finding out it was something real ... breaking out of depression is like reality totally morphing and changing one grand realization at a time (or really, just seeing the truth more clearly).

heh, yeah, no offense but put me on Team Fuckyouowl.

what's the difference between being depressed and suffering from existential crisis?

***

life wouldn't be so difficult to handle or survive or work with if i (or we, rather) lived in a healthier global culture and society.

like, is all this war and murder and starvation and pollution and trauma endemic to the human species, or did we go terribly wrong somewhere along the way? i have a hard time believing we evolved to become such a destructive, hateful species. we are capable of so much more.

i don't know. i don't think i'm depressed so much as traumatized by our unhealthy culture.

ws asexuowl

ARGH

Ok, so I have been half-turned-down for a promotion, despite being recommended by the previous occupant of the job and the next highest up at the place because I didn't answer one or two v. vague questions to the woman actually interviewing me, and now will have to be re-interviewed with it.

And everything seems to have broken with none of it being my fault. To fix my laptop will cost... about the same as a new laptop. TY screen for exploding one morning. My bike is fucked too.

Oh and my best friends/only fucking friends around here are moving to Bristol. Fucking ay.

I think I'd be cool but all this shit happened within the same week. I just can't seem to catch a fucking break. I'm getting drunk and listening to Slick Rick loudly. It's not like i've got shit else to do.

what it feels like for me

-- most everything in my life has been a colossal failure (marriage, career)

-- the things other people point out to cheer me up are barely-disguised colossal failures (grad school)

-- the few things i have been successful are small and fleeting and besides i have failed to capitalize on these things (learned how to DJ at age 35, state fair 1st place in architectural drawing)

-- things are not going to get better. if anything they have only been getting worse and worse and judging from the state of my grandparent's generation they are going to get really bad before i die of natural causes, if i die of natural causes.

-- my goals in life have basically shrunk down to appearing stable enough that i don't ruin my parent's impending retirement and twilight of life by having them worry about what will happen to me after they die. then when they die, i can go ahead and die with a clean conscience.

something i have realized is that aside from my family, all of my friends are either a) literally clinically mentally ill or b) indigent

this tells me something negative about my person which i can't really put into words

i often think my dog is disappointed with me or angry with me.

my meds seem to be having an effect. what that means for now is i still recognise all the ways i've fucked up, and all the things that are not good about my life and may not ever improve, but i suddenly seem to have just enough resources to deal with them and sometimes even look other people in the eye and be honest with them. i know i've seen this feeling appear before and i've let it slide away or done things to wreck it, but just observing that pills seem to make me feel even a little bit less flat is enough to remind me that the worst times are not all i am.

i dunno what to say late great, i'm not in your head so i can't know how you feel. but i'm sure your worst times are far from being the sum total of who you are, too.

same goes for all my fellow travellers on this thread. keep hanging in there.

Hey, that's good news, relatively speaking, NV. I'm glad to see it.

glad to see you are doing better nv.