Depression and what it's really like

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

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.