Mar 11, 2009
depression is not sadness. or grief. or boredom.
depression is not emotive.
to react to a troubling or trying time is sadness.
depression is not that.
depression is to feel hopeless without cause and seemingly without end.
your body exausted and your mind restless.
when every movement, every conversation is a struggle.
and always the wish to sleep without waking. not to die. just to sleep, disappearing into blankets.
when every former joy or passion offers no relief.
it is the fear that this depression will never lift.
it is incapacitating.
anxiety is not just nervousness.
nerves settle when an ordeal is over, anxiety persists.. worsens.
i liken agoraphobia to stage fright.
that feeling of terror of having all eyes on you. then the regret and self-loathing that can follow.
agoraphobia is like stage fright, without the stage.
every interaction, no matter how small, no matter who with, takes energy to overcome.
>>2 years ago i got glasses for the first time. i had never had an eye exam before because i assumed that my sight was the same as everyone else's. when i put on my glasses for the first time i was amazed that i could see the individual leaves on the trees. i feel like the same applies with my depression. i never realized i was depressed, because i thought everyone else must feel the same way. in hindsight, knowing now the difference between feeling sad and being depressed, the first time i remember feeling it was in 2nd grade, and pretty consistently there after.
it's so hard to communicate the ways in which we feel and experience things. i blame my own generation for this. we misuse words in an effort to exaggerate our feelings or drain the words of their meaning. (the boy who cried wolf?) actual depression is hard to validate when minor inconveniences lead us to say "i'm so depressed". when every talent is labeled a genius. starving means you've skipped a meal. and nigger, a vile word, means friend.
i say this because i often feel the need to validate the ways in which i feel. partly because i never trust my own perception of things. and because of this i save little compassion for myself. i still, years later and miles away, blame myself solely for failing college. i try to justify to myself that under normal circumstances, i would have succeeded. but under the overwhelming influence of depression, anxiety, and grief, i did the best i could. but my mind won't accept it's own logic. to see a 0.0 GPA in print, to have the dean enumerate all the things you should have done say squarely to your face "i am very disappointed in you.", then to be cut off financially as a punishment for your failure.... all of those things weigh on me so much more than my own experience. and it shouldn't.
this is bothering me now, because i feel like i'm at risk to fail again. every assignment i attempt, i just get paralyzed by fear. i feel immense guilt for having failed before, fear that i'll fail again, and shame that people make accommodations for me and i still can't seem to get it together. what i need is to treat myself with more compassion so i can move forward, but i can't seem to put that theory into action. it doesn't help that when i went home in december, i was told that if i get another B- my dad would not cosign my loans anymore. and if that were the case, not to bother coming home. and as ludicrous as that sounds, i know my dad well enough to know this is not an empty threat. i'd like to have moved passed this feeling, and be able to separate my present from my past. but i'm just not there yet. there's plenty more i could say on this, but i've been putting off my homework long enough.
posted by sarah 7:35 PM
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"there is within me, and with sadness i have watched it in others, a knot of cruelty borne by the stream of love."
Past
current
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