Depression Understands No Reasons
You might have felt sad at any given moment. Felt down and without strength, without there being any apparent reason for it. Maybe everything in your life is going more or less well. You have a job that allows you to live well, a romantic relationship, a house, but something doesn’t feel completely well within you. This is an overflowing sadness that stops you from getting out of bed for no apparent reason. This is known as endogenous depression or melancholic depression.
This depression that arises from within, it barely lets you breathe and makes you feel as if you carry the weight of the world upon your shoulders. It is a really difficult sensation to explain. In other people’s eyes there is nothing wrong going on around you, but you cannot fight against that feeling. One which makes you feel exhausted and strips you of any desire to do anything.
When the chains that tie you down to your bed are not visible, when the pain impregnates your body but there are no visible wounds. That’s when it is harder for the world to understand you. Depression understands no reasons, but it does understand guilt, despair and lack of joy or will to live.
The pain that I feel is invisible to the eyes, because there are no wounds to explain what I’m feeling. Sometimes, it is even difficult to put into words what I am experiencing. Depression simply comes in and invades me, preventing me from thinking about everything good that I have. The world turns into a hostile place. With every movement, it reminds me how useless I feel.
There is nothing that gives me hope. Everything good gets diluted like tears in the rain, and it prevents me from seeing beyond the darkness in which I am immersed. I have no strength, and it takes me a lot of effort to rest because my thoughts don’t let me sleep until dawn.
But the thoughts I have aren’t precisely the healthiest ones in the world. I think I am a fraud, a useless person that does nothing right, that the future does not hold hope for me because I am nothing. The world is a dark place that constantly threatens to show me how little I am worth. Sometimes, I have even thought of ending all of my suffering, but I don’t have the strength to do so. Also, I know deep down it will not fix anything.
Wrapped up in the darkness in which depression immerses me, I became my own tyrant. I hate myself, and I hurt myself.
The key to feeling better is within me
The worst part is that I know the key to feeling better is within me. Depression stops me from seeing that it is me who has to ask for help, because it is a sickness that is overcoming me. Just as it prevents me from understanding that, even though it is harder than it seems, I have to do my part so that I can start moving again and begin healing.
Furthermore, as much as you, with all the love in the world, want to help me, that overprotective attitude is doing me more harm than good. I don’t need any “poor thing”s or advice like “if I were you…” or “I understand what you are going through, but…”.
What I need is for you to show me understanding, not over-protection. I need you to have an open attitude and try to understand my feelings. Encourage me to seek out professional help. Don’t pretend to be a psychologist without actually being one. Depression is a serious disease. Even though it does not understand reasoning, reasons are not necessary in order for you to consume yourself in the dark little by little.