An Overly Explained Look Inside the Manically Depressed Mind
Depression is a cruel and ugly bitch. I imagine her looking something like a hag with snargly hair standing over a cauldron, stirring up your emotions and cackling while adding ingredients like guilt, self loathing, anger and resentment while the light of the full moon illuminates her scabby, pimply skin. Beaming off the mole on her neck in a way that makes the thick hair hanging out of it glow like a fiber optic wire. Then you look in the mirror and see her staring back at you and you want to kill her.
That urge comes not from some self pitying "You'll miss me when I'm gone" type of fantasy, but from fear. Fear of who you are and all the things you don't understand about yourself. The way we instinctively want to smash a spider.
You hate what you don't understand, and you understand yourself least of all the things.
What is this black cloud? Why am I so sad? What is this invisible impending doom? Why does my heart hurt when I breathe? Why doesn't anyone else feel like this?Why do they get to hog all the happy and live carefree? You resent them for this. Hate them sometimes. It makes you unreasonably and irrationally mean, cruel, and cold. You distance yourself and stay in bed.
So what can you do to fix this? I mean, everyone wants to fix something that's broken, right? Clearly, if you're sad for no reason, you're broken, and depression hurts everyone.
Depression does hurt everyone, but no one worse than you. You're having a nice evening with your family, doing what families do, but you can't even muster the strength to crack a smile let alone enjoy them or yourself. This is where the guilt gets dropped into the cauldron.
You see their loving, smiling faces look at you. Their eyes tell you they know. Their mouth are smiling but their eyes look pained with upturned eyebrows as if to say "I'm sorry for your loss and don't know what to say or do", but you didn't lose anything. No one has died. This kills you. You feel like you're dragging them into the mire with you and it hurts so bad that you'd rather die and end their suffering than to have to see them sympathize and hurt. You think of how much better off they'd be without you. How does that feel. Yeah, like shit.
This is where anger is stirred in. You get so mad at yourself for thinking that, and then for being this way. You hate yourself. You eat junk that's bad for your body and makes you feel icky as punishment. You deprive yourself of water because you don't want to get up to get it, and then you don't really deserve it anyway. You shave a little too hard on purpose. You hit your head with your hairbrush. Take that, self! That's what you get! Freak! Then you go to bed and you try as hard as you can to fall asleep so you can shut yourself up and make it all go away. Well guess what. No sleep for you! Oh no, we're gonna lie here and think about how miserable we make everyone, and how bad the world is, and how there are hungry children with no home or food or water or family that loves them and here you are, you miserable piece of shit, squandering what a wonderful thing you have because your stupid squishy brain wants to be sad.
Here comes the self loathing. 5:00am rolls around and you just fell asleep. Finally. Minutes pass and it's 7:00. Hey ugly! Get up and go do your stupid job! The least you can do is that, right? Right. The mere idea of getting out of that bed to go fill a room with your miserable presence sends you spiraling into a whirlpool of dark eyed disgust. You know you have to do this, to show that you actually have some purpose, some worth... but you can't. I can't! But you do, and you hate every minute of it. The end of the work day can't come fast enough. Everything that everyone around you does just destroys you from the inside out.
Loud voices trying to talk to you, making your ears ring. You don't care what they have to say, you don't want to hear it, but you smile and nod and "uh huh" and just hope like hell that they shut up soon so you can ignore them. Chewing, breathing, laughing, humming. Every little thing pushes you over the edge. Your heart pounds, your armpits sweat, your teeth hurt from the adrenaline your stupid mind is pumping out, the butterflies in your stomach have worked their way up into your throat and you want to puke, but all you can do is burp and stare at the clock.
How can they just sit there and be so ignorant and happy? You become suspicious, there's just no way. There's no way that everyone here but me is happy. They're just better at hiding it. You start to pick out flaws or make up scenarios that would cause them to be miserable. That one is fat, she can't be happy. This one is gay, that's gotta be rough in this society, surely they suffer too, right? Right??
No. It really is just you. So you're broken, different, wrong. Lash out! Say something mean that's kind of funny. That will make it better for sure. No. It doesn't. Well then, FIX IT!
Truth is, and here's where the problem lies, you can't fix it. There is no cure, no miracle drug, no magic unicorn that's going to make you a better person. Pharmaceuticals start a cycle of dependency and struggle. They exacerbate the problem. Take one a day, oh I forgot a day now I feel funny. Take one in the morning, did I take it this morning? Take it again at night on accident cause you forgot, now you're fucked. Take this one to calm you down when you feel especially anxious, that's better. Well if one helps, why not two? Why not the whole bottle? See where this is going? Nothing is going to tell those malfunctioning receptors in your biologically inferior brain to work correctly. Think happy thoughts. Ha ha! Oh, that's a good one. Yeah, you stay positive there. Sorry, it doesn't work that way. Your brain is firing a million electrons of ugly directly at your heart lobe and there isn't a damned thing you can do about it.
You try therapy. Talking it all out with a stranger. First session, you're unsure. Kind of weird, you cry, in front of a stranger. What a loser. Second time, you feel a little better about. No tears, things click, make sense, light bulbs brighten, things are in a better perspective. Third? Well, there won't be a third cause you called and canceled. Oh, you idiot! You were just breaking some ground!
No. I don't want to and I don't have to. This becomes your new mantra. Well, now you're in it. You've just given up. May as well end it and get it over with. You want to, but for some reason unbeknownst to you, you don't. You struggle day in and day out with your stupid feeling, your heavy shoulders, your crap sleep for a couple of hours, then wake up and do it all over again the next day. You miserable fucking sack of juice and loathing.
Damn, Squiddy.
Great writing, but damn. :sad:
::shrug::
every day. you just keep on.
This is an awful thing to go through. Especially alone. Don't give up.
FUCK. YEAH.
:mittens:
This is the shit I try explaining to my retarded New Age hippie friends when they tell me my state of mind's a matter of choice. You can't choose not to be depressed, only not to be defeated by it.
Quote from: Cardinal Pizza Deliverance. on March 02, 2013, 07:21:39 PM
This is an awful thing to go through. Especially alone. Don't give up.
This is the biggest problem. I'm
NOT alone. My husband and son suffer
with me.
:mittens:
This is a scaringly accurate description of my life for the last half year or so.
That sucks. Goin through some shit?
For me it has been every day of my life since I can remember.
How I've made it 36 years without successfully offing myself is beyond me.
Quote from: Sir Squid Diddimus on March 02, 2013, 08:11:06 PM
That sucks. Goin through some shit?
For me it has been every day of my life since I can remember.
How I've made it 36 years without successfully offing myself is beyond me.
:(
I'm not really sure what happened. Have had minor winter depressions for a few years, and this winter it was suddenly much worse than before, and now the days have been getting warmer and brighter for two months and I don't feel any better.
Squid, that was brilliant writing, and completely heartbreaking.
If you can force yourself back into therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy has been shown to be effective (FMRIs actually show physiological changes to the brain) and is a fairly short-range therapy, maybe 20 sessions.
Quote from: Sir Squid Diddimus on March 02, 2013, 08:00:00 PM
Quote from: Cardinal Pizza Deliverance. on March 02, 2013, 07:21:39 PM
This is an awful thing to go through. Especially alone. Don't give up.
This is the biggest problem. I'm NOT alone. My husband and son suffer with me.
I'm sorry. You are very eloquent on the subject. Your words remind me of the times when I get stuck in my own head, obsessive thought-loops going over and over. Even if I'm with people I actually care about, I feel alone. Not lonely, per se. Just on my own, dealing with my monsters.
I think you putting this all into text was an excellent thing to do.
Quote from: M. Nigel Salt on March 02, 2013, 09:53:15 PM
Squid, that was brilliant writing, and completely heartbreaking.
If you can force yourself back into therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy has been shown to be effective (FMRIs actually show physiological changes to the brain) and is a fairly short-range therapy, maybe 20 sessions.
You, of all people, inspire me a lot. Even if you don't know it and we've never met.
Nice one. Pretty much sums up the downswing. How about the good part? The mania. Do you enjoy yours or are you one of those poor bastards who gets wired-stressed and nothing much else? I've gotten in a habit of letting myself swing way up at weekends. Not all the way to full-blown psychosis but just enough get those feelings of superhuman riot animal, then I crash a bit on monday and hate my life til friday rolls around again.
I don't have a lot of upswings. I just have days/moments that I can tolerate.
Sometimes in those moments I actually don't hate myself.
Quote from: Sir Squid Diddimus on March 03, 2013, 08:07:49 AM
Quote from: M. Nigel Salt on March 02, 2013, 09:53:15 PM
Squid, that was brilliant writing, and completely heartbreaking.
If you can force yourself back into therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy has been shown to be effective (FMRIs actually show physiological changes to the brain) and is a fairly short-range therapy, maybe 20 sessions.
You, of all people, inspire me a lot. Even if you don't know it and we've never met.
Aw, thank you! I think you're the bee's knees, myself.
Squid, wow.
Quote from: Sir Squid Diddimus on March 03, 2013, 03:29:16 PM
I don't have a lot of upswings. I just have days/moments that I can tolerate.
Sometimes in those moments I actually don't hate myself.
In that case you have my sympathy, for whatever the fuck that's worth. I can live with down because I have wings. Depression is just the price I pay. Without the mania I'd feel pretty fucking hard done by.
Writing this was kind of therapeutic.
It usually is. I'm definitely more manic, but I also have my days.
Writing can definitely be an excellent outlet. I'd love to see you write more, Squiddy, I always like reading it.
Quote from: M. Nigel Salt on March 04, 2013, 04:39:51 PM
I'd love to see you write more, Squiddy, I always like reading it.
Seconded.
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on March 04, 2013, 04:54:49 PM
Quote from: M. Nigel Salt on March 04, 2013, 04:39:51 PM
I'd love to see you write more, Squiddy, I always like reading it.
Seconded.
Thirded.
You have described perfectly approximately six months out of a given year of my life.
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on March 03, 2013, 10:40:21 AM
Nice one. Pretty much sums up the downswing. How about the good part? The mania. Do you enjoy yours or are you one of those poor bastards who gets wired-stressed and nothing much else? I've gotten in a habit of letting myself swing way up at weekends. Not all the way to full-blown psychosis but just enough get those feelings of superhuman riot animal, then I crash a bit on monday and hate my life til friday rolls around again.
The "mania" is just pre-load material for the regret and self-loathing. You do stupid shit while you're stupid-happy that makes you want to kill yourself later.
I'm getting the feeling BiPolar and Borderline are the same fucking thing only one is a chemical affliction and the other, apparently, makes me a permanent fuckup.
Bipolar is very different from Borderline, but people with Borderline can certainly also suffer from Bipolar Disorder.
That's just it. I don't think I *am* BiPolar. I definitely have periods of high-low-regret though.
I don't think I fit in a box. Asperger's, ADD, Borderline...they all fit and none of them do.
But this is about Squiddy. I was just trying to connect and show empathy, not whine about me. Sorry 'bout that.
Quote from: navkat on March 05, 2013, 02:14:11 AM
That's just it. I don't think I *am* BiPolar. I definitely have periods of high-low-regret though.
I don't think I fit in a box. Asperger's, ADD, Borderline...they all fit and none of them do.
Nothing fits perfectly, because people are all individual. The diagnoses are guidelines, not uniforms.
Thank Dog for that.