Aural Sects

How being depressed works

joyeux-noelle:

I want to make it really clear at the start that this isn’t meant to make anyone upset or feel bad about how they act or talk. I don’t mean this to be passive-aggressive in any way. This is meant to enlighten, not chastise.

This is how depression works:

You don’t know the night before whether you’re going to be able to work productively the next day. Sometimes, you wake up in the morning and know that you’re not going to get anything done; sometimes, you think you’re going to have a great day and then something happens to utterly destroy your ability to work; sometimes you genuinely do have a great work day. 

You live for the latter. Even though the first two are way more common.

You weigh the effort needed to take a shower against the embarrassment you’ll feel if someone notices you didn’t. Often, you take showers not because being clean is the end goal but to shut up that potential future embarrassment, which has become so huge it’s threatening to prevent you from going out of the house at all.

While you’re working, stray thoughts enter your mind - “anyone else could do this better”, or “I’m pretty sure they only hired you because they felt sorry for you”. Comments from other people - no matter how innocuous - rattle around in your head. And the smallest thing - from a devastating snipe from your subconscious to overhearing someone talking about their friends - can derail you for the rest of the day, and there’s really no way to stop it or to figure out what’s going to set you off. And that derailment? It’s just fodder for the voices saying “you shouldn’t be the one doing this job”.

“Validation/motivation/inspiration should come from within” is great for people whose inner voices aren’t constantly telling them how worthless they are and that they should just turn the wheel and drive into a tree or turn the knife and “accidentally” sever an artery.

Then again, it’s a little easier to ignore those particular voices because you know how you’d do it if things got that desperate and those aren’t it.

Speaking of someone talking about their friends - you don’t really have any. This isn’t because you don’t want to have any. It’s because all of your “friends” are really just people who are putting up with your impositions for now. The moment you say something they don’t like? They’ll put you aside - or worse, they just won’t respond at all, and you’ll be left wondering if they didn’t hear it, or if they forgot to respond, or if - and you know subconsciously this is the reason - they finally got fed up and left.

Someone who’s “online” but isn’t responding to you is upset with you.

Someone who’s stopped showing up online is actively avoiding you.

And the people who do talk to you? They’re just doing it to be nice or because it makes them feel better about themselves.

And they won’t do it for long. Because sooner or later? Everyone leaves.

Oh, and making new friends? Out of the question. Why would you want to inflict yourself on someone who doesn’t already tolerate you? So you make a couple feeble comments hoping to get their attention, and then when they don’t start conversations with you, well, your subconscious was right, just like it always is.

So you go home, alone. You don’t go to the gym, even though you’re paying for the membership after a member of your family guilt-tripped you into it, because you look at yourself and your subconscious says what’s the point? it’s never getting better. You don’t go to the store because you’ve made a habit of saving up enough energy to go to the store once a week and just buy everything you’re going to need. You don’t go out because you either don’t have anyone to go out with and so you’ll feel like an idiot sitting alone, or because the people you do have to go out with would, you’re sure, be far happier without you to bring them down.

Maybe if you’re lucky you have the energy to make dinner. You keep a stash of frozen pizzas in case you don’t, but even that seems like a lot of work sometimes and you end up with chips and soda for dinner again because you only have to make one initial tiny effort for each of them.

You watch TV - mostly TV you’ve already watched, because that’s safe - and keep Twitter and IMs open in the background because maybe someone will pop up and say hi (even if nobody ever does because who’d want to seek you out?) and then, eventually, you fall asleep on the couch wondering if tomorrow’s going to be any better.

It won’t.

Now you know.

Yes, to all of this. This has been what my life is like for most of my life. Sometimes it’s a little better than others. Not all of these things are true all of the time at the same time. But they’re always there, waiting for me. I almost always believe that my friends are really my friends these days.

I am both horrified and relieved at how accurate this post is.