Depressing Misconceptions

 If You Tried a Little Harder: Depressing Misconceptions

There is a common misconception about those who suffer from prolonged Depression and its associated conditions.  If it weren’t so sad and injurious to the victims it might even be funny.  It’s this idea, you see, that people who suffer from these conditions continue to do so because they haven’t tried to get better.  "If you tried to cheer up", "If you stopped wallowing in self pity". 

 It’s funny because the people saying this can’t begin to comprehend how stupid they sound to those of us who suffer from the conditions.  It is as though they believe they are the first people to tell us we should just try harder and we were completely incapable of coming up with this brilliant solution on our own.  As if we are so enamored with the pain and misery that comes with the package that we’re hoarding it; secretly getting some personal satisfaction from the fact that the world is empty and grey and meaningless.

 I’d like you to stop for a moment and actually consider who – given the option – would choose to live a life like that. Oh yes, every teenager does go through that point in their lives where nobody understands them and the world is out to crush their hopes and dreams … angst is actually a part of healthy emotional growth.  But then we move beyond that and the world starts to make sense again, we realize our parents aren’t (always) monsters and adults aren’t discussing strategies on how to make us fail at the annual PTA meetings.  Everyone goes through it, everyone understands what it’s like and then everyone realizes it’s time to grow up.

 It’s time to grow up.  Too often depression is seen as childish.  Adults get sad, they get over it and they get back to real life – like grownups do.  But depression doesn’t follow the same rules.  That "get over it" step doesn’t pass on by like it’s supposed to, instead it only gets harder, deeper, and when you think you should be seeing the surface instead you’re seeing the light of your sinking ship.

 But you don’t stop trying!  Hell no, the *first* thing you do is start swimming for air; trying to find something that’ll patch that leak and get you sea worthy again.  So you start trying to prop yourself up with things; work, play, people, loud music … and when it turns out all that is hollow and empty and just so much busywork and somehow you’re deeper than you were when you started, you turn to other options.  Now the effort isn’t to get happy, it’s to get away from pain … alcohol, drugs, self medication just to keep you from drowning any further … but, of course, you should never go swimming when you’re drunk.

 Thankfully, though most of us get there, we don’t all stay there.  At some point we realize the drugs aren’t helping anymore and now they’re just more trouble than they’re worth.  So you look for other options.  Medication.  Medical Science is great, it’ll give you a seemingly endless supply of mix ‘n match options to tackle your personal jabberwock; of course, they all come with a price.  This one makes you impotent, this one won’t let you sleep, this one gives you tremors in your hands (which still haven’t gone away 7 years later), more often you’ll get one that’ll do all three.  If you’re very lucky – very very lucky – you’ll hit on something that works in the first or second attempt.  More often you’ll move from pill to pill, getting sicker, suffering more side effects, stacking more pills up to combat the side effects of other pills, and you still may never find anything.  (If you’re bipolar you also have the option of a few pills which take away your depression at the cost of all emotion … if there is something worse than depression it is this.  At least before, you could feel pain.)

 So you start seeking therapy, which is great and fine and if you are suffering your depression from an identifiable event in your life can even work.  But if you’re one of the many with free floating depression, the type that has no focus, no logical reason, no monster to tackle and overcome, there is only so little that talking can do.  The worst part, though, is when you think it’s working … when the pills and the meditation and the music all trick you into believing you’re getting better … just to kick the stool out from under you when you dare to smile.  Again.  Again.  Again.  And Again.

The worst thing to suffer from when you’re a victim of clinical depression isn’t Pessimism, it’s Optimism, because it keeps getting you back up on that stool.  How many times, I wonder, can you do a trust fall with no one to catch you and nothing but pain at the bottom?

And through all of this, as the things you once loved slip from your grasp because you just don’t have the strength or even the desire to hold on to them any longer, the people you need to understand, fail to the most.  Because they were sad once, they got hurt, or disappointed, or scared … but they got over it; and you could too …

 If you just tried a little harder