Matt Gemmell:
There’s a lot of misunderstanding out there about mental health. Some people are up, some people are OK, and some people are down. Everyone gets down from time to time. Pull your socks up, and get on with it. Hold it together.
It’s reasonable advice – as long as you’re just feeling down.
For some people, though, down doesn’t cover it. They can’t just get on, because their feet can’t find the bottom.
There’s a predator down there. That’s the truth. Black as pitch, and silent in motion. It can see perfectly even where no light penetrates – in fact, especially there. It’s surprisingly warm to the touch, but it can drain all the heat out of a room in moments.
As one who suffers from depression, Matt’s piece really hit home for me.
As someone who struggled with depression for years, the thing that depresses me the most now is the thought of going back there.
I, too, suffer from depression – though mild now compared to the horror of depression and anxiety (a.k.a. constant fear and dread) that I went through for a year, several years ago. My mother has had it worse, suffering from varying levels of major depression for about 40 years. Every time I hear someone say something ignorant, like ‘It’s all a matter of attitude’, I want to hurl them off of a very high precipice. Luckily, I’m not actually a violent man.
I recently wrote a paper on depression with some classmates. It is about depression through an evolutionary perspective. The project helped with my own outlook on the experience.
https://docs.google.com/a/binghamton.edu/document/d/1iS5ARrQUB5SnTZY5F-xxecA0SgT0czW62bnVwalczfY/edit?usp=docslist_api
It´s like the last scene of Ridley Scotts “Alien” (the Original). There you are in a small room, bare of shelter and recognize the beast.. you can´t move, hardly breathe, trying to be invisible. Until you understand, that the beast is a part of yourself. You´ll never get rid of “it”.
The Hole – Townes Van Zandt
http://youtu.be/Z8XHFRsze1o
Thanks for reading (I’m the author of the piece that Shawn linked to).
Just a note that I’ve had some more recent experience of an anxiety disorder too, with panic attacks and suchlike. I wrote about that a year or so ago: http://mattgemmell.com/fear/
Thankfully it’s mostly disappeared now, but it never goes away entirely. Hope you feel better.
Thank you. I honestly haven’t suffered from anything beyond the garden variety of anxiety/tension or mild depression since for several years. They went away right around the time I had my first seizure (a gran mal). I’ve read that there is some correlation between seizures and relief (partial or full) from depression. I may now be epileptic, but my seizures are under control, and I gladly accept take over a life dealing with horrors in my head.