This Is What Depression Actually Means, Because It’s Not Just Romanticized Nihilism On Social Media

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I’m Daniel and I used to write about artsy stuff. But this is not an artsy post.

It’s a diary-like piece to get things out of my chest. I don’t write it to be special or to help others or with any other thinkable purposes. Can I just write something and that to be it? It’s just a random set of words that I don’t know if it has a logical structure yet, but they say it helps if you write it down.

Writing supposedly helps battling depression, which I’v been facing for about a year now. I’ll skip the load of possible reasons why I’m in this situation. It’s a rhetorical article, and speaking about it would just start a discussion I’m currently trying to avoid. I’m fucking depressed, man. I’ve heard people talking about it before. I knew it was something serious, but didn’t believe it could be THAT serious, not until it fucking hit me. I don’t remember how it started, because there are no early symptoms, like for any other diseases. It’s just a bunch of mixed feeling and actions that slowly and surely crush any firewalls around you, while you’re watching as a spectator, until you are completely exposed to unexplainable psychical pain that you don’t know how to handle. And then you’re there.

 

That’s why people kill themselves. That’s why I tried to. We don’t know how to react to the unreasonable amount of pain hitting all at once. There are no textbooks on that and if there are, they don’t really help. People told me to see a therapist (really?). It might be useful. But I’m thinking practical, financially speaking. Is it worth it? I don’t know if I am depressed, for sure, since I self-diagnosed. Maybe you know better. I’ll list some signs that I’m facing as I write.

 

I mentioned the suicidal thingie. I used homemade rope (made of pillows cases). I am somehow thankful that I lack basic knot-tying and physics knowledge, since I figured polyester is a shitty fabric and the ceiling lamp can’t support more than 60 kg. I literally cried like a baby when I realised I suck at killing myself. Maybe subconsciously I never wanted to die, otherwise I would’ve been dead by now. Maybe it was the Providence (hallelujah!). LOL. I’m laughing about it. Are you depressed if you laugh about how you failed to take your life?

I get serious panic attacks (which I used to believe they’re just another white people made up bullshit). They have real effects. I am a creative person and that’s a good thing, but facing depression as a creative mind is a fucking curse. I’ve been labeled for years as an chronic overthinker, OCD-ist, hypocondriac sociopath (if that is really humanly possible). Exactly, let it sink in. I get up during night time unable to breath because of my thoughts. I panic. I get dizzy and start walking around the room as a fucking maniac. I started practicing breathing exercises and working out quite often to get rid of those. But I make jokes about it, at work. I try to be funny. I’m sick of being asked how I feel, cause I try to ignore feelings. Talking about them is just a reminder of my condition, so to speak. When people tell me stuff like “you’re not depressed, dude, you’re just sad! don’t overreact!”, I reply with “but I AM NOT SAD!”. Because I’m not. I seem to live normally, and sometimes I forget I’m emotionally rotten inside. But I feel that while most people’s general state is whatever, my default one is “I want to die!”. It’s like, I wake up in the morning, I involuntary meditate on how much I just want to simply cease to exist and than I have my coffee.

I used to make fun of this popular, hipster-ish idea of nihilism, romanticized by social media. “Life does not matter, boo-hoo, let’s all fucking die!”. You don’t know how much you want to live until you face death and survive it. With me is more like, I don’t want to die (to die means to have lived); I simply want to never have existed. I really believe (it’s a belief that has now deep roots in my personality) that I am a scum, a horrible human being. And I swear I’m OK with it. I am not deliberately bad, it’s more like a consequence of my life, if that makes any sense. Nothing satisfies me, everything looks pointless. I don’t feel or react when people offend me or compliment me and sometimes that make them raise an eyebrow. The numbness makes my immune. I smile and nod, sigh at most, and move on. I am aware of all these fucking things, I know, trust me, I know they’re toxic, and it’s only me who could change that by whatever tips and tricks are out there to overcome depression. But the thing is, as a self diagnosed depressed fella, I don’t get to put myself in that position. I postpone everything. I have no idea how I even wrote this. I’m thinking “can I just live with this from now on, without doing shit about it, please?”.

 

I’ve read a bunch of stuff and did none of them. This piece of writing is the only thing I did in almost a year, in order to help myself out. I think that talking doesn’t help it. Or maybe it’s just the “talking with another depressed person” that’s not very useful, because, guess what, my fiancee is in the exact same situation as I am. We don’t really eat (we do it only out of common sense, not cause we’re hungry), we never go out, and if we decide to do something together, like watching a movie, she just turns and sleeps while I let the movie playing in front of my eyes, without any focus. When we fuck we do it just for the high. We used to have fights, couple fights. “You didn’t do the dishes! You didn’t sweep the floor!”. And they’re good, proofs of alive, dynamic souls. Nobody does the dishes, nobody sweeps the floor, and we’re just shrugging. She cried her eyes out on my shoulder the other day because she didn’t get up of the bed and we missed the sunrise on the beach. I told her it was nothing, and then I cried too, without tears (I save those for bedtime).

 

Knowing that she struggles with the same inner, bottomless pain that I’m going through, kills me the most. And that’s probably what kills her, too. It’s like an endless upside-down Jenga structure to hell. I’m bummed out, she gets sad, I get more sad at seeing her sad and so on. It just seems like we’re both gonna fucking dry out, affectively dehidrated, while hopelessly staring at each other. I’ve seen that when, by a huge miracle of will, the planets get in perfect line and try to do something for her, to make her feel better, It make me feel better. So I should probably work on that, too.

I’m chatting with her now, as I write. That’s something, considering that I took a sabbatical from social media shit (I also quit alcohol and pot for 3 months, to prove myself that I’m not completely worthless and I can accomplish at least something). She says she misses me. Probably another premeditated move, trying to make me feel better. I mechanically tell her that I love her. She probably knows that even though it’s true, it’s just another set of words to fill in the blanks of silence. We both now we say stuff to each other to help each other out, and knowing it doesn’t really work out. Meh.