Make Your Own Ah Shit Here We Go Again

I recall existence endlessly entertained past the adventures of my toys. Some days they died repeated, violent deaths, other days they traveled to space or discussed my swim lessons and how I absolutely should exist allowed in the deep finish of the pool, peculiarly since I was such a talented doggy-paddler.

I didn't sympathise why information technology was fun for me, information technology just was.

But equally I grew older, it became harder and harder to access that expansive imaginary space that made my toys fun. I recollect looking at them and feeling sort of frustrated and confused that things weren't the aforementioned.

I played out however story lines that had been fun before, but the meaning had disappeared. Equus caballus's Big Infinite Adventure transformed into holding a plastic equus caballus in the air, hoping it would somehow be enjoyable for me. Prehistoric Crazy-Passenger vehicle Death Ride was just neat a toy passenger vehicle total of dinosaurs into the wall while feeling sort of bored and unfulfilled.  I could no longer connect to my toys in a mode that allowed me to participate in the feel.

Low feels almost exactly like that, except most everything.

At first, though, the invulnerability that accompanied the detachment was exhilarating. At least as exhilarating as something tin can be without involving real emotions.

The start of my depression had been aught merely feelings, and then the emotional deadening that followed was a welcome relief.  I had always wanted to not give a fuck about anything. I viewed feelings as a weakness — abrasive obstacles on my quest for full ability over myself. And I finally didn't have to feel them anymore.

But my experiences slowly flattened and blended together until it became obvious that there's a huge difference betwixt non giving a fuck and not being able to give a fuck. Cognitively, you might know that unlike things are happening to you, simply they don't feel very different.

Which leads to horrible, soul-decomposable boredom.

I tried to get out more than, but most fun activities just left me existentially dislocated or frustrated with my inability to enjoy them.

Months oozed by, and I gradually came to accept that perchance enjoyment was not a thing I got to feel anymore. I didn't desire anyone to know, though. I was notwithstanding sort of uncomfortable nearly how bored and detached I felt around other people, and I was still holding out hope that the whole thing would spontaneously piece of work itself out. As long as I could manage to not alienate anyone, everything might be okay!

However, I could no longer rely on genuine emotion to generate facial expressions, and when you have to spend every social interaction consciously manipulating your face into shapes that are only approximately the right ones, alienating people is inevitable.

Everyone noticed.

Information technology'due south weird for people who yet have feelings to exist around depressed people. They try to help you lot have feelings again so things tin can become back to normal, and it'southward frustrating for them when that doesn't happen. From their perspective, it seems like at that place has got to be some untapped source of happiness within you that you've just lost track of, and if you could just see how cute things are...

At first, I'd try to explain that it's non really negativity or sadness anymore, information technology's more than just this detached, meaningless fog where you tin't feel anything nearly anything — even the things you love, even fun things — and y'all're horribly bored and lonely, but since you've lost your power to connect with whatsoever of the things that would commonly brand you feel less bored and alone, you're stuck in the boring, lone, meaningless void without anything to distract you from how boring, lonely, and meaningless it is.

But people want to help. So they try harder to make y'all feel hopeful and positive nearly the situation. You lot explain it once more, hoping they'll effort a less hope-centric approach, but re-explaining your total disability to experience joy inevitably sounds kind of negative; similar peradventure you WANT to be depressed. The positivity starts coming out in a spray — a giant, desperate happiness sprinkler pointed directly at your face. And information technology keeps going like that until you're having this weird argument where yous're trying to convince the person that you are far too hopeless for promise but and so they'll give up on their optimism crusade and let you get dorsum to feeling bored and lonely by yourself.

And that's the near frustrating affair well-nigh depression. Information technology isn't always something yous can fight dorsum against with hope. It isn't even something — it's nothing. And you tin't combat nothing. You can't fill up it up. You can't cover it. It'southward just there, pulling the meaning out of everything. That existence the case, all the hopeful, proactive solutions start to audio completely insane in dissimilarity to the scope of the problem.

Information technology would be like having a bunch of dead fish, but no one around you lot will acknowledge that the fish are dead. Instead, they offering to help yous look for the fish or try to help you effigy out why they disappeared.

The problem might non even have a solution. But you aren't necessarily looking for solutions. Y'all're maybe just looking for someone to say "sorry about how dead your fish are" or "wow, those are super dead. I nonetheless like yous, though."

I started spending more time alone.

Maybe it was considering I lacked the emotional depth necessary to panic, or maybe my predicament didn't feel dramatic enough to make me suspicious, but I somehow managed to convince myself that everything was still under my control correct up until I noticed myself wishing that nothing loved me then I wouldn't feel obligated to go along existing.

It's a foreign moment when y'all realize that y'all don't want to be alive anymore. If I had feelings, I'm certain I would have felt surprised. I take spent the vast majority of my life actively attempting to survive. E'er since my most distant single-celled antecedent squiggled into being, there has been an unbroken chain of things that wanted to stick around.

Even so at that place I was, casually wishing that I could end existing in the aforementioned way y'all'd want to leave an empty room or mute an unbearably repetitive racket.

That wasn't the worst part, though. The worst part was deciding to continue going.

When I say that deciding to not kill myself was the worst part, I should clarify that I don't mean it in a retrospective sense. From where I am at present, information technology seems like a solid enough decision. But at the time, it felt like I had been dragging myself through the about miserable, countless wasteland, and — far in the altitude — I had seen the promising blink of a slightly less miserable wasteland. And for but a moment, I idea peradventure I'd be able to stop and balance. But equally soon every bit I arrived at the border of the less miserable wasteland, I found out that I'd have to plough around and walk back the other way.

Shortly afterward, I discovered that there's no tactful or comfy fashion to inform other people that you might be suicidal. And there's definitely no way to ask for help casually.

I didn't desire it to be a big deal. However, it's an alarming subject. Trying to exist nonchalant most information technology simply makes it weird for everyone.

I was also extremely sick-prepared for the position of comforting people. The things that seemed reassuring at the time weren't necessarily comforting for others.

I had and so very few feelings, and anybody else had so many, and information technology felt like they were having all of them in front of me at once. I didn't really know what to do, and then I agreed to run into a medico so that everyone would stop having all of their feelings at me.

The adjacent few weeks were a haze of talking to relentlessly hopeful people almost my feelings that didn't be and then I could be prescribed medication that might assistance me accept them again.

And every management was bullshit for a really long time, especially up. The applesauce of working so hard to continue doing something you don't like can be overwhelming. And the longer information technology takes to feel different, the more than information technology starts to seem like everything might actually be hopeless bullshit.

My feelings did first to return somewhen. But not all of them came dorsum, and they didn't go far symmetrically.

I had not been able to intendance for a very long time, and when I finally started being able to care almost things once again, I HATED them. Simply hatred is technically a feeling, and my encephalon latched onto it like a child learning a new word.

Hating everything made all the positivity and hope feel even more than unpalatable. The syrupy, over-simplified optimism started to experience almost offensive.

Thankfully, I rediscovered crying just before I got ill of hating things.  I call this emotion "crying" and not "sadness" because that'south all information technology really was. Merely crying for the sake of crying. My brain had partially learned how to be distressing again, simply it took the feeling out for a joy ride before it had learned how to use the brakes or steer.

At some indicate during this stage, I was crying on the kitchen flooring for no reason. As was mutual practice during bouts of flooring-crying, I was staring straight ahead at cipher in particular and feeling sort of weird about myself. And so, through the motion-picture show of tears and nothingness, I spotted a tiny, shriveled slice of corn under the refrigerator.

I don't claim to know why this happened, but when I saw the piece of corn, something snapped. So that thing twisted through a few permutations of logic that I don't understand, and produced the well-nigh confusing tour of uncontrollable, debilitating laughter that I have ever experienced.

I had absolutely no idea what was going on.

My brain had plainly been storing every unfelt scrap of happiness from the terminal nineteen months, and information technology had impulsively decided to unleash all of it at once in what would appear to exist an act of vengeance.

That piece of corn is the funniest thing I take ever seen, and I cannot explicate to anyone why it's funny. I don't fifty-fifty know why. If someone ever asks me "what was the exact moment where things started to feel slightly less shitty?" instead of telling a overnice, heartwarming story nigh the back up of the people who loved and believed in me, I'1000 going to have to tell them about the piece of corn. So I'chiliad going to have to try to explicate that no, really, it was funny. Because, see, the manner the corn was sitting on the floor... it was so lonely... and it was only sitting there! And no matter how I explain information technology, I'll get the aforementioned, confused look. So peradventure I'll try to testify them the piece of corn - to see if they get it. They won't. Things will go even weirder.

Anyway, I wanted to terminate this on a hopeful, positive notation, but, seeing as how my sense of hope and positivity is even so shrouded in a thick layer of feeling like hope and positivity are bullshit, I'll but say this: Nobody can guarantee that information technology's going to exist okay, but — and I don't know if this will be comforting to anyone else — the possibility exists that there's a piece of corn on a floor somewhere that volition make y'all just as confused about why yous are laughing as you accept ever been about why you lot are depressed. And even if everything nevertheless seems like hopeless bullshit, maybe information technology's just pointless bullshit or weird bullshit or possibly non even bullshit.

I don't know.

But when you lot're concerned that the miserable, boring wasteland in front of you might stretch all the way into forever, not knowing feels strangely promise-like.

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Source: https://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/05/depression-part-two.html

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