Everytime I try to put my finger on what this all is about I come back to just one thing: No one understands. I feel like my own mother is ashamed. I just applied for a job as an advocate for mental health. The company needs to know that you are or have at one time suffered from mental health. So I wrote my cover letter and had my mom look over it. "Well, you don't want to sound like you're TOO depressed." What? Don't sound like I have a mental illness for the people asking if I have one? Don't sound like it's bad? Pretend and hide what you struggle with because then people will hire you? That might be true, but it really rings true for where she's at in all of this.
Bottom line: No one gets it. No one gets what having depression is like. I'm really afraid that I won't find a bf who understands either. I feel that most people who get to know me are overwhelemed by my emotional display. Things are always harder to deal with when you have a 5 foot layer of personal bullshit to get past before you can start to feel just "crappy".
It's a long road and it's difficult. Everything that should just be a "normal" problem ('cause everyone has them) is magnified times 50. No one gets why it's harder and takes longer.
"Why are you disappointed in me? I didn't do anything that bad." I get disappointed easy, it's true. I feel the disappointment harder because I have high expectations. Why? I am not totally sure, but I think it comes from feeling desperate for their to be an easy fix in getting well again and trusting. There's no such thing as a drive thru in the world of 'trust'.
"Why do you pity yourself?"
Do I? Maybe a little, sure...but I can no longer distinguish what is actual "pity" and laziness from feelings of worthlessness and rejection. So I dunno if that is true. It's like they're both holding steel pipes in an obnoxious game of 'red rover'.
"Why do you let these things stop you/keep you down?"
Because rejections are huge boulders in the path to my happiness. It has always been that way. This is the part of the failing system that I don't know how to work around.
"So? keep applying/trying." My favorite. When every rejection or thing that I don't hear back from chips away at my erroding sense of self, it makes it that much harder to see the light at the end of the tunnel. That every rejection feels a little bit like a tear in the fabric of my sanity, especially when it conflicts with the values I hold dear: independence, autonomy, self-care, love. It drives me mad when i'm not living the life I want to: also gets very depressing. It's hard for someone out-of-practice with "living" to remember what that feels like to keep going, and going strong. Usually I'm just 'holding on'.
In a sense, I get why they do it (why they all say such useless "cheerful" dribble). It's really the only response when someone says something like what depressed people say. I don't know what I would tell a person like me, knowing full well how I'll see it. It's just the answer that says both: I believe in you and I care about you but stop bitching. It's not bitching, it's not self-pity, it's years of shit piled high onto a wheelbarrow that's breaking down. It's the very ideas and coping mechanisms that we hold on to that are proving too much for our laod. It's the inevitable times of loneliness that we internalize to be our fault. Somehow the world is worse with us in it. It's true that it's a selfish illness, but the selfishness is there as a symptom of a larger issue: lack of feeling loved, needed, cared for, desired. Selfishness DERIVES from ill fitted attempts to get the fundamental emotions we need from ourselves and others. It's a passive agressive tool used to manipulate and harm others and ourselves. With Selfishness, nothing is EVER enough.
To analyze one of my hardest-to-comprehend-and-accept parts: Break ups, for all their purpose, honest intentions and good causes, are the salt in this huge wound I call: selfishness of blame. They reaffirm everything we earnestly believe about ourselves. It's not all about us, but we believe it is. Our cognition has not developed beyond the point of earnest recognition. It is therefore typical that all the good that happens is not because we did it, but all the bad is because we saw the crime "go down". It is more than improving self esteem, it's changing the way we think...about ourselves, about everything in the past, present and future. And most importantly, about other people. It's finding a new way to change with the tides, if you will.
It makes no sense. I don't even know if I believe what I just wrote, though I know there's truth in it. This is because even that all stems from the same belief I hold which is that: we are the cause, we are the solution. And while I think that this is legitimate, sometimes it does not make up for the fact that there is an honest-to-god flaw in the design.
Given those two options, and being not very sure which one is me, how would you recomment I proceed?
What if, parents, friends and lovers, there was nothing to be ashamed about? Someone who understood what it is like not to want to get up in the morning, and on more than just the occasional Monday? What would those people say to themselves? If you're "normal" you would probably start by identifying the factors causing the worry and then look at options that would fix it all. But what if there was a tiny flaw...like a sratched DVD? If it skips everytime at that one place, how do you know what is there if the scratch won't let you see it? You do your best to make up a story for what might be beyond the scratch, only come to find that you were way off the mark, or maybe right on it?
Would the depressed person then say they are at fault --they scratched the DVD--and it is something just to "get over" or would they say: damn, most of this movie is good there's just that one part that keeps cropping up every once in a while.
To put it another way: I just have this tiny scar that pops up in pictures sometimes, but I usually just get out my Photoshop to fix it later. I don't let the scar stop me from taking pictures, it just requires that I do a little more work to get ready for the picture.
THAT is combatting Depression (on a too simplistic, small scale of course). It's knowing you have a bit more work to do to be happy, and that is what people need to understand about people with this illness: go easy on them. They are doing all they know how to do at the moment. They will get there, it just may take a little longer.
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