Depression: an update

Ivy: (Hedera hibernica) a symbol of endurance — Ivy: (*Hedera hibernica)* a symbol of endurance

by Jade Sterling

(Language warning)

I hate the name we use to describe this. We think of depression as sadness, as being down. It’s not unhappiness or misery, dissatisfaction or loss. It’s not even grief.

It’s nothing. It’s emptiness. It’s an utter loss of self.

I can’t just snap out of it. It’s not something I can fix. I can’t just wake up one morning and pull myself together—because I’m not broken and don’t need fixing.

I can’t explain it, not really. How do I communicate what’s going on in my brain to people with no idea, to people who’ve never felt anything like this? I would never want them to understand. Not because I’m such a martyr, struggling along by myself, but because it fucking sucks.

You know what else fucking sucks? People not believing me. Yeah, I’m put together and capable and laughing. But I’m also medicated up to the eyeballs and keeping my mouth shut about the utter turmoil in my brain. My drugs don’t make me happy, they just keep the fog from descending so far I can’t function. They don’t do anything to the voices that have occupied my brain since I was 14. They don’t make me feel any less worthless, inadequate, or like a burden.

But hey, got a smile on my face so I must be fixed. (I was never broken.)

How do I communicate what’s going on in my brain to people with no idea, to people who’ve never felt anything like this?

There’s more to it than sadness. I’m actually not sad. I’m pretty impatient, agitated and bad-tempered. I snap at the smallest thing and who can equate such an unattractive personality with the Hollywood image of a delicate and tearful waif? Nope, it’s dark and cold and I feel like I’m constantly pushing back that fog so just give me a break if I’m a bit snappish.

It never occurred to me my chronic back ache could be a symptom of my depression. It turns out, this is more than just a mood state and actually involves some fairly major physical symptoms. I feel restless all the time and my back aches despite any and all interventions. It’s not muscular and it’s not skeletal: welp, must be mental.

I don’t like driving alone because one intrusive thought could see me plowing my car into the central reservation barriers. I don’t like heights because it would take me all of one sudden movement to throw myself off. Zoloft hasn’t made those impulses disappear; I keep them under control.

Viewed from the outside, I’m fine. Maybe I’m a little more irritable or withdrawn, or maybe sometimes my smile doesn’t quite reach my eyes. Inside, I’m still dealing with the post-apocalyptic world that I woke up in all those years ago. My transformation is imperceptible to you, and I’m glad, because that means my medication is working.

I’m actually not sad. I’m pretty impatient, agitated and bad-tempered

I hate the clichéd ‘laughing on the outside, crying on the inside’ but yeah, it fucking sucks inside. It hurts. It’s guilt mixed with apathy mixed with pessimism, mixed with narcissism all topped off with a healthy dose of that desire to just screech as loud as my harpy lungs can handle.

And it’s so easy to feel like no-one is listening. Why would they want to? For all its horrors, the symptoms of my depression don’t exactly lend themselves to sympathy. Apathy makes me a killjoy, pessimism makes me a Debbie Downer, and with all the narcissism flooding through me, all I want to talk about is myself. The guilt persists and I become ashamed. No wonder people don’t want to hear it.

I want to be acknowledged as struggling but I don’t want people to suggest I may be struggling. I want people to understand—to know—that while I’m short tempered when I’m well, I’m not actually this irritable or snappy. I don’t want to snap at you! I want people to understand that if I’m withdrawn one morning, I’m not pissy or in a bad mood, I’m just tired—but I don’t want the pity or the understanding looks, or—God forbid—the overbearing attention. No, I don’t want to talk about it.

People don’t understand and here’s the paradox: for me to be understood (and I do want to be understood), people need to understand, but I would never want them to understand, because to understand it is to experience it and I never want anyone to experience it because, again, it fucking sucks. It’s a horror. It’s a pervasive, all-encompassing, omnipresent fog of nothingness that floats around my head like Eeyore’s own personal raincloud.

My transformation is imperceptible to you, and I’m glad, because that means my medication is working.

And it won’t go away. Conflicting research muddies the scientific understanding of depression: is it a chemical imbalance, is it not a chemical imbalance, is serotonin involved, oh wait serotonin comes from the gut, here take this drug, oh but we don’t actually know how antidepressants work, you won’t need any medication, come off the meds and go to therapy, and oh look it came back.

Enter the next paradox: I’m heavily medicated and keeping the fog mostly at bay, and I’m genuinely enjoying my life and its normal ups and downs. But that doesn’t mean I’m well. It doesn’t mean I’m not depressed. I’m happy but I’m depressed; go figure. The inadequacy has voiced its displeasure at its relegation to the back benches and has returned to front and centre: how can I not even be good enough at being happy?

Body positivity is a big thing these days, but how about some recognition of mental health positivity? Where’s that hashtag? I don’t think I’m any better at accepting my mental health state than I was a year ago. I still hate it, I still fret about being cured, I still don’t want to accept I might be on medication for the rest of my life. I tell myself there’s nothing wrong with me—but there clearly is!

I hate my medication, I hate the side effects, I hate relying on something to basically keep me alive. I hate the doctors’ appointments (have you tried exercise?), I hate the monthly prescription run, I hate the waiting and the fretting in case my strictly controlled medication isn’t available. I hate feeling fine most of the time and then waking up one morning utterly blindsided and paralysed. I hate being so irritable. I hate the guilt and the shame and the uselessness. I hate that I’m unpredictable and I hate that I’m a burden to so many people. I hate that I’m a liability. I hate that I have to remind people I’m depressed.

Is high-functioning depression a thing? Oh look, some narcissism.

I’m holding a job—and successfully, I might add—I’m still married, my social group has grown and people request my company.

Quite how or why, I’m not sure. I spend an awful lot of time just staring off into space, lost in the deluge of my own mind. I often can’t concentrate and it amazes me that I hit my professional deadlines. I can’t remember the last time I fired on all cylinders, the last time I did anything at 100 percent effort. That doesn’t stop me ruthlessly criticizing my performance, condemning any and all efforts as pointless and insufficient.

I live for the bursts of joy for which I work so hard. I live for that moment I finally find some flow, for the stupid jokes my husband tells me to cheer me up, for the praise I get when someone likes my work, for the feeling of landing a move I’ve been trying to learn. All normal things that all of us live for, but you don’t understand: I live for these moments. I quash the intrusive thoughts and the impulsive twitches on the steering wheel for these moments. I work so hard to make sure I have these fleeting, blinding bursts of happiness because otherwise, the pain is unbearable. The fog descends and takes hold. I can’t turn off the negative thoughts, I can’t run away from them, and I can’t ignore them.

I hate it.

I hate this so much.

But here I still am. I’m pulling through because I want to pull through. I’m not broken, I’m not damaged, I am not my diagnosis. The highs that I get and the love that I both give and receive are worth the lows. Every single one of those moments is a life jacket when I’m drowning and I have to believe I deserve every one of them.

Otherwise, what’s the point? There is no point. There is only waking up every morning whether you want to or not. I take solace in being insignificant to this universe.

150mg of Sertraline a day. I’ll see you again in three months. ■