Major depression is a serious illness that affects a person's family, work or school life, sleeping and eating habits, and general health. Its impact on functioning and well-being has been equated to that of chronic medical conditions such as diabetes.

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Just One Point Of View:

Tired, weak, and attacked by unsubstantiated guilt due to a resonating lack of self worth. That self esteem either flew out the window long ago, or never really existed to begin with. It’s a burden that noone understands, and I hope it‘s just a side effect of this darkness that makes me believe they don‘t want to, although in some cases I do know it to be true.

Clinical depression and anxiety disorders are far beyond normally understood feelings of sadness and worry. Believe me, I feel those feelings aswell, and I can differentiate between them and the black hole that is this illness. They are disruptive, self abusing, torturous and both physically and emotionally agonising. Never have you felt so alone or isolated, caged in a mind that spends all it’s energy during the day faking smiles while crashing at night into an indescribable deep pit when that last drop of energy burns out.

You end up lying to people around you. Pretending to be happy, or saying you’re tired. Mostly you know they’ll judge you for being melodramatic if you give up the act for even a moment. In your mind, you know they think you’re weak. They don’t understand it’s not a choice and there’s no visible way out of it. It’s not a joke.

Psychiatric help is expensive. So are medications, and they tear at you in other ways. There is no such thing as a happy pill, and if there is I have yet to come across it. Many find you going through weeks of adjustment. None I have experienced leave you living on cloud 9, more likely it feels like a hangover surrounded by dense fog. Even when the fog lifts you know things still aren’t quite right.

Some only experience depression short term and bounce back, others suffer longer and may become suicidal. Some people, like myself (and this is hard to admit), have suffered on and off since childhood. Most likely a chemical imbalance partially contributes to such longterm suffering. Events can also be a factor or even a trigger to a downward spiral. You become out of touch, and lost with a dismal outlook. It’s hard to see hope, and it’s easy to torture one self.

Frustration can build to a point where you want to break something, but anything you damaged in any way causes an enormous wave of guilt to make things worse, so you know the only thing you can break without feeling the guilt is yourself. Bruises, cuts and other marks are easy to hide. For many in this case self mutilation is not about gaining attention, in actual fact the feeling is more related to escapism. It can ground you temporarily and tear your thoughts away from inside your head. A dangerous diversion. The sad reality is that these thoughts never leave you, and you become addicted to the pain and have to fight off visions of hurting yourself over and over again.

Once the unexplainable tears and pain subsides slightly, you’ve either spent most of the night awake in turmoil and get few precious ours of sleep, barely touching on enough to give you energy for the following day, or you oversleep as if each minute you get will never be enough to feed this exhaustion. Going to work is torture. Simple routines become a heavy drain and can make you feel like you just wish you could sleep for a month, if only you had the time. Time is another thing that constantly slips through your fingers. Conversations are forced, people seem ignorant because you know you’re falling apart but you know they don’t see it. Why can’t anyone see through you?

But what would you do if they did care? Probably run and hide, or perhaps if received in the right manner you would welcome some comfort coming from people you hold up on a pedestal. In the end you know you’re on your still own. Always alone. It’s a lonely, maddening cruel world.

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