Depression and what it's really like

today i told my roommate i was going to class, then i laid silently on the floor for three hours, then i climbed out my bedroom window and walked around the house and came in the front door and said class was "pretty good"

:{ at least you still have some pretense to dignity.

me, i'd just sit on the couch in a stained t-shirt drinking beer and watching steve harvey's family fued 'til flies were buzzing around me.

http://xfinity.comcast.net/blogs/tv/files/2010/11/Steve-Harvey.jpg

yeah i think like half of my emotional stress now is caused by pretending i don't have any. my dignity tho is only in my roommate's eyes, not mine or god's or the guy shuffling past the house while i climbed out who obviously has much worse problems than i do

fwiw i have v. much enjoyed your comments on russian history, among others

dignity is for suckers

thanks mookieproof! that specifically is kind of a relief.

For all the good posting here will do me, I should probably go shout at a brick wall instead (and, hey, maybe I'll give this a go at lunch), but sometimes I need some sort of outlet between therapy sessions, for lack of anyone else to talk to about these things. Despite being pretty happy with most aspects of my life right now, I'm just finding myself crushed more and more under the weight of not having any people in my life I can really consider good friends. It's like I have a great orbit of my immediate family and then a really periphery orbit of people that are basically acquaintances, people I get along with well when I see them but that I don't think either them or I would really consider us "friends". It's that big gaping space in-between those two orbits that is weighing me down.

It doesn't help that I read a couple articles a few weeks ago about how difficult it is to make friends after 35 and I pretty much hit all of the demographic ticks that allegedly make it even harder (male, relatively set in a career, being a parent). I'm just slowly coming to the conclusion that I will never again have anything resembling a close friend and I find that incredibly depressing. Its just become pretty clear that if, especially as a male, you don't have a really solid group of friends after college, you're basically pretty much screwed.

I had a whole bunch more random bullshit typed out here, but it made me sound even more pathetic, so I'll just leave it at that.

Hey jon. Is it possible/easy for you to check out activities locally you'd be interested in? I realise having young kids limits you t timewise etc, but doing something, anything, in a group gives at least a common start.

Telephone thing- i've applied to go back to college today, and i'm 7% older than you. Lots of ppl dont make the best of college first time round, and most of them wont have had reasons as valid as yours. In any case, you can only start from today with it- im hoping having a bit more life experience, and knowing what i want now and why i want it, make up for at least a couple of the intervening years.

Luck all.

I've been trying (unsuccessfully) to find some sort of activity to do, but I'm striking out left and right. The vast majority of groups I've researched in my area are aimed, from what I can tell, at retirees, because they all meet right in the middle of the work day. The only things I've found that seem to line-up with my age group are either sports groups (which I'm absolute shit at and wouldn't enjoy) or singles groups (obviously not). The options for working people who aren't interested in sports are pretty much non-existant.

Lots of ppl dont make the best of college first time round

Arguably the only way to know how to get the most out of university is to have gone there once, messed it up (like me), and gone back a second time after a few years (which I haven't done, but maybe given the right circumstances, like having money).

good to hear about you guys going back to college, i'm still mustering up the courage to go back after dropping out a decade ago

Ha jon, i was hoping you dug a sport. ps being shit at it doesnt matter, but obv not enjoying it is not much good to you.

I like sports! Just am really terrible at them. I've joined a few leagues in the past that were supposed to be "just for fun", but inevitably someone takes it way too seriously and the fun just immediately evaporates.

Sucks, in the movies one hype montage would sort it out but irl getting really good at sports takes at least idk a week

Okay for real lol, I needed that this morning.

what are things you do like to do? Do you find it easy or hard to introduce yourself and/or talk to new people?

you go to music shows semi-regularly iirc, maybe you can volunteer at a non-profit or co-op music venue or festival?

I'm pretty good at introducing myself and I like to think I'm pretty good at making new acquaintances. I mean, I usually handle myself pretty well in new social situations and am pretty good at talking to new people. That's not really my problem, it's finding people I connect with on a somewhat deeper level that will lead to, "hey we should hang out and do X some time". In the past 3 or 4 years I've managed to meet a few people that I bonded with pretty quickly, but they all fizzled out after that intial meeting (one moved across the country, another flaked out on my, a third was always "too busy"). I just need to fin a situation where I can make more of those type of connections, because my week-to-week life has really limited chances.

volunteer work or some sort of class, maybe? those are things that people our age tend to do to make new friends, expand the scope of their lives beyond the job/family axis.

I just volunteered with a local community theater and really hit it off with a couple of people there, so I would second volunteer opportunities. Part of the problem with making friends after school is that outside of work, it's hard to get enough exposure to individual people that those deeper levels of connection form. (The other part is everyone is busier!)

it's difficult, man

Not much help, but I can relate, jon. I do a weekly evening class and I've met some nice people through it so I think that's a pretty good option but tbh I don't think I'm really about to take any of my acquaintances to the next level of "we should hang out, not at this class, and do something not related to the topic of this class".

That's partly because the ones I get on with best are a lot older than me, nearly my parents' age, and it feels odd, but apart from that tbh it's probably my failing rather than the class's, as I've never been good at that acquaintance->friendship conversion thing.

Regarding Vinnie's post, a coworker was telling me they volunteer as an usher at the local large-ish theatre, they've met a few friends that way and they get to see the plays (some of them touring plays with name actors) for free, so that's a potentially interesting perk if nothing else...

TT it's 12 years since I dropped out and I'm still too scared to go back, but I've got to say my uncle loved going to uni in his 30s. He missed out on it first time round as he married young, had a messy divorce a year or two later, had a string of dead-end jobs throughout his 20s, and was finally in his element as a mature student.

volunteer work or some sort of class, maybe?

I'm really trying to find one of these two things. Unfortunately the classes thing isn't working out, again any of the local community college courses I'd even remotely be interested in are during working hours.

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/05/depression-part-two.html

<3

― j., Thursday, May 9, 2013 11:42 PM

This is brilliant, yes. I was given this link by someone else a couple of days ago, and I should have shared it here, so glad someone else did. I've actually showed it over the last couple of days to people I've been alienating recently to go "this is what my head is doing, if only I was articulate enough to express it in a non-scary way".

that is a great link!

the thing that really got me there was the making fake faces thing. makes you feel like a sociopath.

i think everyone does that to some extent, non-depressed people just don't feel like they have to do it all the time

yeah. i mean, everyone does that when they don't really care about something. the awful thing about doing it all the time is you're doing it to all your friends.

i think people do it even when they do care! well... okay maybe i am sociopath after all

I need some way of saving up strength/wellbeing for Saturday, as I'm best man at my brother's wedding, but been feeling pretty bad recently. Thinking some kind of jar. I'm bipolar with just over a year since I was last hospitalised, so I was probably the worst choice he could have made. I'm figuring faking it will be fine, I'm fine at that in normal situations, but does anyone have any advice for a high stress situation like this? Also, the wedding will be my last day drinking before starting meds aimed at sobriety (antabuse etc.), so trying to keep my drinking under control will be an issue too.

This is going to be a disaster (he did say he didn't care how terrible my speech is, he's going to have a good day and wants me there, but for some reason that doesn't alleviate the stress as much as I know it should).

This is the bit that I think hit closest:

it's not really negativity or sadness anymore, it's more just this detached, meaningless fog where you can't feel anything about anything — even the things you love, even fun things — and you're horribly bored and lonely, but since you've lost your ability to connect with any of the things that would normally make you feel less bored and lonely, you're stuck in the boring, lonely, meaningless void without anything to distract you from how boring, lonely, and meaningless it is.

xpost, I dunno, I just plaster on the fakeness. Have an escape mechanism. Take up smoking to give you a reason to go outside (I go out for a fag and play a game or two of freecell on my phone) as soon as you're done with the speech (or invent a kilt malfunction to allow you to run straight off to the bathrooms or something). At my own wedding, I planted a couple of drinks at a couple of tables so that if someone engaged me in conversation I could excuse myself because I was over "there" and had a drink waiting for me. Lather rinse repeat).

Oh, I smoke, so hopefully that will help. Just trying to fit both my tobacco tin and a hip flask into my sporran :(

xp totally agreed, i really liked that bit

i mostly liked the frowny face w hat. good look.

and i wish i could offer you some advice, dowd, but i can't. when i'm in that frame, the best i can usually manage = a blank expression and an acute focus on the idea that time actually does pass.

Ha, yeah. I don't know what kind of advice I expected, just venting. I mean, I'm gonna have to be...personable. Not my strong point. As far as faking goes, I'm more a sprinter than a long distance guy.

I went to my two of my best friends' wedding on a day when my depression was at its worst. Didn't have any official capacity in the wedding, but I knew practically everyone there. Almost didn't go. I gave myself a lot of time to escape in between conversations - hung out in the bathroom and other places where I wouldn't have to see people. It was... manageable. The thing to remember is that there are a lot of friends and family there (er I assume), so you don't need to spend much time with any given person. Saying that you have other people to talk to is as good an excuse as any to leave a conversation. I didn't do much talking in the end, mostly just said hi, barely faking a smile. Hope it goes ok for you.

My supervisor at work is refusing to accept what I've tried to make abundantly clear to him: I am DONE with this job, I can't spend every second outside of classes in New Jersey talking to our fuckwit customers and do in fact need to spend time studying now that I have classes, and that I'm more than willing to cut loose and live off my savings while I look for part-time work in Philly instead sacrificing my private life to keep working as much as possible. If I'm too important to keep things running, too fucking bad; maybe they shouldn't have been foisting everyone else's miscellaneous responsibilities onto me for four years and refined their interview process enough that they could have a better than 25% success rate finding customer service personnel who are willing to put up with this and do a reasonably good job. I've already given them over four fucking years, structured literally every aspect of my life (from where I live to what I do in my free time) around being available to them 45 hours a week (50+ after the commute) and I've got nothing to show for it but wasted time and regret.

If you are entirely willing to walk away from a job, then the supervisor can go fuck himself. As long as you are clear in your own thoughts then you have everything you need to go forward.

The reason your supervisor can't seem to accept what you have tried to make abundantly clear is that your previous actions set up a wholly different relationship and set of rules for how you acted. You are changing the rules. Your supervisor is still playing by the old ones, hoping you'll play along. Just don't. The rest is beyond your control. Old saying: there are none so blind as those who will not see.

embrace freedom, TT!

Summers here are hard. This is usually the time when friends graduate and uproot and move away. I have a lot of acquaintances, but I have a hard time making friends that I actually call up to hang out with, and three of those people are leaving. Which leaves me with exactly one platonic friend here in town. Also, the heat makes me want to kill myself.

wow, i just realized i feel like a dirty freak wherever i go. like i'm some kind-of disgusting gollum monster, and i'll crawl out of my cave out into the human world where people spit at me and tell me that i'm a curse on god's creation.

not a great feeling, tbh

it's easier to deal with that feeling when you live in a big city ime

i felt like that spectrum, for maybe 10 years, from early adolescence until a year ago or so, with the worst part being around two years ago when i was severely depressed, barely functional really. sometimes it seems like i just "grew out of it", which isn't helpful to you, but i really do feel better now. i think the reasons i feel better are twofold. 1.) i started making "taking care of myself" a priority... so all the obvious stuff like diet, exercise, SLEEP (the biggest one for me, a lifelong insomniac), whatever. i think that as adults, we are our own "dependents," and if we neglect ourselves it has comparable consequences to what happens to children when their parents neglect them. 2.) i got a dog after college and having to take care of her made me feel like my life had, on the day-to-day level, a kind of purpose, albeit a modest one. that matters, i think. the worst days of my life were idle ones, where everything i did felt arbitrary and consequence-less. also she is the best dog in the world.

it would be a lie if i said that i know, precisely, that these two things are what made me feel better, but i do know that i no longer spend any time thinking of myself as anything like a "gollum monster"... a phrase you used which struck a chord with me because it is similar, although maybe more whimsical, than a lot of the things i would think about myself when i was depressed, i.e. i would think that i was "sub-human" somehow. i don't feel that way anymore.

sorry if all of this sounds like cliches. it's hard to talk about emotional health without resorting to cliched sounding things. i'm sure you'll get better, spectrum. the most important thing is to treat yourself kindly, both in your thoughts and actions.

(that was way too long and over-sharey. sorry. mostly, i wanted to respond because the thing you said about not wanting to meet people because of internalized self-loathing just really registered with me.)

impossible to over-share on depression thread

(also, i basically think that with this stuff, everyone has their own path toward feeling better... not every "trick," cognitive or behavioral, works in the same way for every person. so just, everyone here, i think you should all follow your instincts. if you do what you think is the best thing for yourself, you are probably doing the right thing.) xp to myself

thanks silby.

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