Depression

I'm really not sure how else to bring this up with people.

So I'm sure some of you have read the hyperbole and a half comic about depression (http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.ca/2011/10/adventures-in-depression.html (part 1) http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.ca/2013/05/depression-part-two.html (part 2), for those who have not), as I did about a year ago. I really liked it- I found it funny, but I also found it a really different explanation of how it feels to have depression, because at the time, I was still very stable (if not a bit burnt out by all the work I was currently doing) and happy and I felt pretty normal. The problem is that now, I see myself and my current behaviour in the beginning of the comic.

This year hasn't really been the easiest, and I don't know why.

I mean, autumn was great. I started at a new school and did well and then it was my 18th birthday and i was making friends, i got asked out, i began a relationship, i was living away from home for the first time and thoroughly enjoying it. That was great. And it wasn't the living away from home part that got to me, I swear- yes, I missed home, but I'd also started accidentally calling the building I lived in "home" sometimes. The food was great, the people were good, my room was very comfortable. Making friends was tricky but I was doing all right and doing okay in my classes. In fact, the whole fall semester was just fine. I really liked it. University was great. Still is- I can't wait to go back.

I think it was around the winter semester that it started. I started having trouble getting out of bed in the morning- that was it. Once I was up and out the door, I was fine. But almost every morning until the reading week break, I didn't want to get up and go to class. I saw no point. But I made myself get up anyway, and then I felt fine. My dad called me in the morning a few times, both to make sure I was up and to make sure I was feeling okay. It did help.

Reading week break, I think, propelled me through the rest of the semester. I got a chance to do sfa and do it somewhere I really love to be, and somewhere I am right now- the cabin. I'm always at my happiest here. I feel so lucky I have this place to come to. It's a godsend, really.

I think by finals again I was pretty tired, but I was also excited to move home (and also sad about it), not to mention excited to be done. And then I was home for May, applying for jobs, until I actually got one (a miracle given how late I applied for lab jobs) and for the past two months, I was working.

I think it really began in June, a week or so in. I felt really sad, but chalked it up to hormones and just let it be. When it was two weeks in, I told mom that I had been feeling really sad lately. Her response was that "when I feel like that, I just need to force myself to think positive thoughts" which of course wasn't really that helpful. Oh gee, just try thinking positive! Gosh, why didn't I think of that before? (This isn't meaning to get mad at my mom, of course- I know she was just trying to help). I figured it was probably nothing, and kept going.

At one of our summer cabin visits (god, I know how rich I sound when saying that. Sorry), I got really upset about something- I think missing some EPASS emails (which was something I later cleared up). I was talking to ptarckas- as I usually am- and I admitted to him that in order to try and get myself back together from crying over the guilt of missing all these emails and disappointing people, I had slapped myself in the face and scratched the sunburns on my shoulders and arms. It sounds ridiculous. It still does.

Ptarckas, of course, was distressed to learn about this, and asked that I please stop. He called it "self harm" and that was the first time I ever saw it that way. It's not like this was the first time I'd attempted these things to pull myself together- slapping myself in the face, banging my head against the wall, pulling on my hair, scratching myself really hard. This usually happened when I started to get upset about something- like when mom had said I could paint outside or clean the car, and I had picked clean the car, only to get outside at the same time as Freckles and have her claim the painting job, leaving me the option of sitting in my room all day uselessly or making money doing work I didn't want to do. I decided to clean out the car. However, I had to find a vacuum attachment, and kept complaining to my parents that I couldn't find it in the hall closet where it should be. Mom came with me to help me look, and I was poking around, not seeing it, but doing the typical terrible-search-job-of-children and getting frustrated. Mom told me to take things out and look, which I didn't want to do because it created the work of putting everything away, so I slammed two bottles down on the floor. Mom said to me "if you're going to be like that, go and sit in your room, because nobody needs this." I promptly went into my room, sat in the closet crying, "pulled myself together" and came back out and buried my attitude. "Nobody needs this," I told myself. "Nobody wants it. Act like a fucking grownup. Be happy, because that's the emotion they want, and your emotion is stupid and babyish anyway." I cleaned the car.

Ptarckas's reaction kind of made me realize that I shouldn't really be "pulling myself together" that way. And in the weeks since then, I have noticed a lot of urges to do so, mostly occurring whenever I get sad again. "Quit feeling sorry for yourself," I'd think. "If you're sad, fix it. Don't blame the world for your problems. This is nobody's fault but your own. Work harder, be better, be happier." "Quit feeling sorry for yourself" is something that I heard a lot as a kid whenever I would cry and I wasn't physically injured or bullied- basically, if nothing had been done to me that would justify crying.

This "fix your sadness" attitude turned into me writing things down on scrap paper at the lab when I had to wait for something to finish, hiding them so nobody would see and want to talk about it. Also, I have not been... I don't want to call it self-harming, but I guess that's kind of what it is. I just sit and ignore the urges until they pass. They don't last long. It's harder to get myself back together to hide this from my family, who I really don't want to tell given mom's reaction, but I figure it's worth it.

The sadness itself comes and goes. I feel horribly guilty about it. Who in their right mind wants to deal with somebody who's sad and crying and feeling sorry for themselves all the time? After a certain point, I worried, it would seem like I was just trying to be a victim on purpose to gain sympathy points. I was convinced nobody would want to deal with this. Hell, I'm surprised at how ptarckas reacts, given that he's still the only person I've talked to about this. I keep waiting for him to get exhausted by me constantly breaking down and getting violently upset by stupid little things, but instead he just sends me virtual skype-hugs, tries to make me feel validated, and tries to help calm me down.

Which is why I'm writing this (don't know if I'll post it, but if I do I guess you'll know my decision). I need to know if anybody else ever feels like this- like you're suddenly way too sad all of the time and exhausted by having emotions and beating yourself up for feeling sad in the first place. I need to know if this is something that a lot of 18 year olds go through and it's normal and okay, or if this is wrong and something I need to get help for.

The sucky part is that this is making being a feminist on the internet more difficult, because I just can't deal with something that exhausting right now. Having those opinions feels like a constant parade of "can we please not talk about that" and "you're wrong" and honestly that really fucking sucks, and it's difficult enough for me to deal with (since I take everything so fucking personally) even when my emotions are somewhere stable.

See, this is where it sucks. I just suddenly feel like "oh hey you haven't been writing either" and it's like the world just keeps taking things I care about away from me, but then I'm like "no, you can't blame the world for this, this is your own damn fault for not working harder" and I just don't want to do anything about it and it's too exhausting to feel like this as much as I do.

For the record, since I know people are bound to worry: I'm not suicidal. I'm sad a lot, but I still want to keep existing. Very much so. Existing is important to me. I want to get my uni degree, my masters, my PhD, heck, even my MD. I can't do all of those without existing. Plus I am still okay enough to know that this probably has an end point.

I just... I'm really not sure how to bring this up with people. Maybe I am taking the easy way out. Who cares? I don't owe the world the moral correctness of bringing this up in the "right way".

yer pal,
swegan