Depression is not a sign of weakness. It means you have been strong for far too long.
- Robin Williams
Last week I talked about the wall that anxiety can throw into your face at any given moment. Anxiety attacks can be abrupt, violently changing your mood at a moment's notice. Anxiety is often visible to others who pay enough attention. Depression is a different beast. Depression is patient. It eats away your sanity, your motivation, your very energy. It lets you be happy for periods of time, allows you to show those around you that you are feeling okay. It allows you to construct a mask that you put on in front of others to let them think everything is fine. Then depression decides that the next day you physically won't be able to get out of bed. Depression is a terrible dungeon master who knows that in order to create the most pain, you allow the victim to feel hope and happiness before ripping it from them.Anxiety is a wall. Depression is a pit.
The pit can form for many reasons. Personal setbacks, loss of loved ones, toxic relationships, physical abuse, chemical imbalances that are entirely out of your control, and countless other things. What makes depression so awful is that unlike anxiety, it doesn't always have an immediate onset. It can build over time, slowly dropping you further and further into the ground. It can do it so subtly you don't even realize it's happening. But once down in that pit, it can seem impossible to climb out.
So people accept that they are living below ground. They build their lives down there, devoid of sunlight and true happiness. Sometimes, other people in their lives wonder where they have gone, so the depressed put on their public face and show themselves. The happiness they show can be real and they can feel like they are living in the sun again, and sometimes it is simply a facade to make the people around them feel like nothing is wrong.
Depression has a strange way of manipulating the way you perceive things. It causes you to think that you are a burden to those around you, that you don't deserve the care and love from the people in your life. It makes you want to sit in your darkness so that you don't trouble anyone else with your issues. These issues are all consuming in life, but somehow they seem to be trivial things that others shouldn't need to see or help with.
I want to try and explain what this life is like to those who don't fully understand.
If you are living with depression or anxiety, please be careful with reading this next part. I know what that life feels like, and this next part could be a little too real. Please feel free to skip ahead if you need to.
Imagine, if you can, living in the pit. Alone, dark, without drive or purpose. It's like being asleep but not resting. Life without living. You decide you are done with this non-existence and want to take the healthy next step. You decide to try and climb out of the pit. You can see the light, the laughter, above you. You see people who could care about you.
Now imagine that the wall of anxiety hits you.
You fall crashing from the heights you've achieved. You lay broken, crying, struggling to breath. No one is there to help. You scream, words stop making sense, only primal sounds escape your lips.
No one is there to hear your cries.
No one is there to tell you to breath.
No one is there to hold your broken body.
No one sees your pain.
Now you gaze up at the top of the pit, which got a little deeper from the impact of your crash. You see those who are happy, who are living their lives with a purpose. You want to join them. But now you know that the wall could appear from anywhere. And you know how agonizing the fall is now.
This is what living with depression and anxiety can feel like. It's not how everyone feel it. But what I can tell you is that everyone wears a mask. Be it just to get along with that one friend of a friend who you just can't stand, to hide depression so others don't feel it's burden, or simply because the mask has been in place so long that you've forgotten how to take it off.This tattoo is me. Literally. I had this done within the last week, and it holds so much meaning to me. I will forever have inscribed in my skin that the smiles may hide the pain. Some people become so skilled at acting, at portraying the role of a happy person, that others are convinced. They don't see the actual face under the mask. They don't see the pain, the tears, the anguish.
If you suspect someone you know is struggling with depression, don't push them to talk to you. That can be so incredibly difficult. Just stay close. Watch them. Notice the small changes in their being. You'll know when you can talk to them about it, when they want to talk to you, when you need to just listen, or when you need to simply be there for them.
“I hid my wound under my clothes. Nobody could see it, including myself, and I completely forgot about it. Then I met someone who, filled with love, held me tight in that point. The pain was devastating, and I hated him, o how much I hated him, the cause of all my suffering. Then I met someone, beautifully dressed, and I loved him so much, holding him tight with all my passion. And he suffered badly, and he hated me, o how much he hated me, the cause of all his pain. So the story went on till I met someone who undressed himself, standing completely naked, with all his horrible wounds. Hence I also undressed, and I saw my horrible wounds, which he could also see. Then...”
― Franco Santoro
Toodles!
