It's Not About You, Honestly

An Open Commentary on Depression, Not To Be Taken Personally.*

You know what is the worst part about being depressed? Don't get upset, this is not a commentary on you, but when a depressed person is at their worst no one wants to be around them. And that is when we need people the most.

I mean, I can understand it, I really can. If you've never been depressed it's impossible to understand that someone could be so bottomlessly sad, so empty without being able to be filled again. The common response is "Well, just don't be sad anymore!" Or "It's a choice to be happy, you just have to decide to do it." Or my personal favorite of late "It's much easier to be depressed. You have to make an effort to feel good."

As if depressed people are just lazy, pessimistic mizers who don't understand the complexities of happiness. Oh God how a depressed person just wants to be happy. I don't think there are people more desperate in the world to "just be happy". And it's not for lack of trying, generally. Though there are surely a large percentage of people who just choose to ignore their depression or do derive some bizarre satisfaction from it, for the most part when our brain chemicals have stopped functioning it's us more than anyone else in the world who wants to be fucking happy.

But the sun doesn't shine. The hours of sleep are never enough and nothing you could possibly do seems to be worth the time. Hands are too heavy to pick up and create, to pick up the phone and call a friend, to lift a pan to make food, to open the door and leave the house. They have just the right weight for a remote control or a keyboard and mouse. Just barely enough lift in them to keep us generally distracted from our own minds, if we're lucky. Enough weight to pick up a bottle or a pint of ice cream.

It's nearly impossible to explain this to people who have never felt it, to someone who has never known someone so effected. I am not stupid, I can understand that - just as I can understand that for most people it's not the most enticing plan for a lovely day to be with someone who just can't smile no matter what you do.

There is a feeling of defeat on their end. A feeling of helplessness and frustration. Sometimes anger. I'm depressed, but I can empathize. No one wants to hang out with the sad kid. I learned that twenty years ago.

But for a person feeling so down it is just exactly the thing to get us through some days - to have a friend volunteer to come to your house with a stack of movies and some snacks and just be that other breathing entity in the room. To stop by unexpectedly for tea. To offer to make you dinner, to clean the dishes, to suggest they stay just a little bit longer than planned. These little empathetic gestures mean the difference between getting out of bed and getting dressed in the morning or sleeping through the day. They mean the world to us.

I sometimes think about carrying around a picture diagram of the chemical components of the disease Depression. I would take it out at any time someone insisted I should just "be happy", shaking my head, patiently and pointing to the receptors on the diagram that weren't connecting properly, fizzling and crackling like a severed electric line. And then I would hand them a pamphlet explaining that I didn't want anything special from them, that my being depressed was not a reflection on their inability to perform as a friend, but rather in spite of it. It would outline all the little quiet things they could do that would give me the extra bit of strength to get through to the other end. I would hold their hand and tell them not to be afraid.

It's more delicate than that, though. People will fear that which they don't understand till the end of time, and asking us to try to understand is sometimes too much for us to bear as humans. And so for each fear a person who needs an extra moment of kindness is going to go ignored today. For each frustration there is a person who is reaching out who will be overlooked in lieu of the more fun things on the agenda. For each impatience there is, so unfortunately, one person who begged for help who is giving up on life. For that I am sad.

Me, I am on the way to recovery. Aside from the inevitable intensified weepies I am not having any other major side effects to make note of. And I have a light at the end of my tunnel. In four days I can jump start my brain again and move on with my life. It's just days like today - in the middle of the process - that I wish I had someone to be with. I miss my Austin friends who were so spontaneous, intuitive and open. They were not afraid of my sadness and knew just the ways to lift my spirits. They knew when I needed them. They came when I called.

Not to worry about me. I've been through worse, and I have plenty of support from people all over the world. I will be on the other side soon.

*For the record I know some of you are concerned, but I've decided that I owe it to myself and to all those other people who need help and understanding to talk about my depression here in this forum. Consider it documentation. But I'm serious when I say I've been worse (a year ago was so much more so!) and it has a definitive end point. I promise I'll be back to normal. By next week even! I thank you for reading and for all your kindness.