Depression is a tricky thing. The term is thrown around somewhat loosely when describing feelings of just being sad, or when you’ve been in a sour mood for a while. We’ve all heard at one time or another someone saying, “Don’t worry about me, I’m just depressed.” To be honest, if someone were truly depressed, you should definitely be worried. In all actuality, someone who is really depressed would find it hard to say the words out loud. That’s because one of the hardest things about being depressed is to talk about it. The stupid part is that talking about it is really the only way to get yourself out of it.
The difficulty lies in the fact that most people don’t want to be seen as complainers. They want to keep with the status quo, and many people out there would prefer to suffer in silence than be seen as a complainer. It doesn’t help that a lot of times, the advice offered to people who are depressed tends to be, “Well, why don’t you go and do something about it?” Or the more combative version, “Well, if you’re not going to do anything about it, then stop complaining.” There’s a general belief that depression is something that can be shaken off if someone just has enough willpower and determination. This mindset only serves to make coming out of depression even harder.
The problem with that way of thinking is that if you are depressed, and you believe that all it should take is willpower, then the moment you find that you can’t just “shrug it off,” you find yourself getting driven deeper into the depression because you have “failed.” The longer you stay depressed, the more you feel as if you aren’t trying hard enough, but no matter how hard you try, depression will not just be shaken off like raindrops off of an umbrella, which just leaves you with more feelings of despair. It’s a self-defeating cycle to believe that you can beat depression through sheer willpower. You may be able to distract yourself for a fair amount of time, but the depression will never just magically go away if it’s not honestly dealt with.
Of course, that’s if there is a logical and obvious reason for the depression. If someone dies, or you suffer some form of great loss, then you have a simpler task of pinpointing a reason for the depression. It doesn’t mean it will disappear instantaneously because you acknowledged the cause, but it does help to speed the process. But what do you do if you just generally have feelings of sadness, malaise, being lost, or of being worthless? What if you honestly don’t know what the cause of the depression is? How do you approach it? Where do you begin?
These are questions I ask myself on an almost daily basis. For some time now, I’ve been feeling more and more lost, more directionless, in my life. I’ve had numerous theories, and many attempts at getting myself out of my “funk” as I call it, but with little to no success. I’ve been especially hit with it hard recently, ever since I’ve been living in Japan, but I’m beginning to think that this latest episode is just a continuation of what has been a lifelong struggle with depression. For much of the time, I feel utterly worthless, and that my value as a person is pretty low at the moment.
For the most part, I’m a functional person. I manage to take care of my daughter, since my wife is the one who works, and I don’t speak the language here, so it makes sense for me to be the stay at home dad. I get the chores done around the house, although to be honest, it tends to be the bare minimum. I manage to feed myself and my daughter, although I know I could be doing that a lot better. I don’t have a particularly active social life, but when I get the chance, I participate when I can, and I think I can be pretty pleasant company.
The problem lies in the fact that I do much of this mechanically. I know which motions I have to go through in order to get things done. I know how much I need to do in order to get by, so that I’m not living in squalor, or subjecting my daughter to those kinds of living conditions. I know what to say in social situations to get a laugh, so that I’m not just a static presence in the room. However, I honestly don’t know how much, if any, pleasure I derive from any of this. Much of the time, I feel tired, sometimes too exhausted to participate. However, I still force myself, because I know that if I don’t, I’ll just fall further into this negative state. This is purely an intellectual choice, because I know if I don’t do something, anything, then I’ll likely just end up in bed all day, and my daughter can’t afford to have me be immobilized.
The thing is though, despite these symptoms being more prevalent in recent history, they aren’t anything new. It may just be my state of mind currently, but I can’t remember the last time getting through the day wasn’t some form of a struggle. Yes, there have been times where it was less so, but I can’t truly say with any clarity of mind that I haven’t had a day where I didn’t feel as if I had to fight my way to make it through the entire day.
The worst thing about all of this is that, as I mentioned before, I have no idea where this stems from. I’ve been to therapists, I’ve spoken to friends, I’ve done a lot of reading on the subject, but I can’t seem to find an answer. I’m not sure if it’s because something is missing from my life, there’s something in it that shouldn’t be, or some other option that isn’t within my realm of consciousness that is affecting me this way. The easy way out of this would be to get some pills and call it a day, but I don’t think that’s realistically a solution. It may serve as a bandage, but I doubt it will actually solve anything. Not to say that I haven’t sought them out. There was a point where it was a consideration, but the psychiatrist felt that it wasn’t necessary, and that therapy would be enough at the time, and really, as time has gone on, I’ve come to the conclusion that a drug-induced apathy would be less preferable to what I’m going through now, I’ve heard too many horror stories of people who have felt nothing while on anti-depressants for me to even consider it anymore.
Not to say I haven’t experienced true, unbridled joy in my life. There are moments in my life that I would never give away, never trade in. Meeting my wife and eventually getting married, the birth of my daughter, and my friends are all points in my life that have a significant positive effect. However, as much as I hate to say it, they have not taken away this persistent feeling that something is wrong with either me or my life.
My latest struggle has to do with being the stay at home parent. I feel inept and at times, downright detrimental to the health of my daughter. I feel it would be better for my daughter if I wasn’t the stay at home parent sometimes, but as it stands right now, I’m who she’s stuck with, and I’ve got to make the best of the situation. The hard part is that because of my general feelings of ineptitude and worthlessness, it leads to a massive inferiority complex which leads to a lot of short fuses, bad tempers, and cranky moments that is having some very negative effects on my relationship with my wife. At times to the point where I feel as if they’d be better off without me. Non-sensical, yes, but no one ever said depression made a lot of sense.
Like I said before, the hardest part about depression is talking about it. Much of it has to do with not wanting to complain. People look at my life, and they see a beautiful wife, an adorable daughter, me not having to work, and yet still having a nice place to live, and they would think that I have nothing to complain about. Hell, that’s what I think to myself, but that only tends to feed into the self-loathing that comes with depression. I think “I have all these amazing things, what do I have to be depressed about?” and I beat myself up because I don’t have an answer. Well, this is my attempt at talking about it, even if it’s not the clearest thing. I worry that I’ll never break out of this, even after all the different attempts I’ve already made, and it has made me hesitant to try anything else in fear of just failing some more. But just talking about it helps, and while I don’t really have much opportunity to do that, being so far away from my closest friends, I can still at least put it out there. Who knows… maybe this will be the start of something better.
No comments:
Post a Comment