different kinds of pain
The first reason is: P has never experienced a depression. She talks about pain and melancholy, she even wrote a thesis about the subject. But she really hasn’t got a clue.
How do i know this for sure?
1- When another friend had just lost her baby in very sad circumstances, P’s reaction was: “she must be in a depression now.” Doesn’t work like that… People don’t immediately go into a depression after some traumatic event, some people never experience depression at all and the ones that do, will find that it will hit them much much later.
2- At a moment when i was very sad, she said the sentence which nobody who has experienced depression would EVER say to another person: “you are just not trying hard enough to be happy”
Afterwards she even had the nerve to tell me that i ‘enjoy being depressed’
Because what P doesn’t realize is that I DID experience depression. Twice.
First time was when i was in school in Gent, typical age for a full identity crisis. Heartbroken because of a breakup with a boyfriend, very confused and angry after the divorce of my parents and struggling with a very low self image after failing miserably in school.
Such angst, such pain! Did i cry and yell?
No of course i didn’t, I actually had a pretty good year at my new school. Good marks, finally doing something i enjoyed. My mother was getting less sad, my brother finally was finding his way again and things between me and my ex boyfriend were distant, but ok.
And so one year after all the drama, I should have been ok. Didn’t need to be so strong all the time, didn’t need to keep up a front all the time.
But i wasn’t ok. I felt an overwhelming loneliness, a sadness. I cried without knowing exactly why. And i thought: I just need to deal with things, be sad once in a while, start talking about things to friends, to my family, to my ex boyfriend.
In the meantime i tried to live a normal life. Didn’t work. Couldn’t concentrate, slept all the time, day and night. I went between feeling everything so intensely that i thought i would go crazy and being completely numb and unable to function. And feeling incredibly guilty all the time, hating myself for not being strong enough.
It wasn’t a week of not eating because of love sickness, it wasn’t a couple of months of being zombie, it was a full year before i was able to live almost normally again. In the end it was therapy which helped, i needed to say some things out loud, find the words for it, so simple, so difficult for me back then. In the meantime i ruined my year in school and i even cried in front of the teachers at the exams.
But i survived, so i guess it was a necessary thing, one time breakdown, very normal at that age? Facing the big questions.
When i am 26 i get diagnosed with MS.
Again, not yelling or screaming. No, dealing with it just fine. Getting on with life. This time i DO talk, I have learned to say things out loud by now. I even talk about it constantly, compulsively, wether people want to hear about it or not. Once in a while i get so scared it feels like i can fysically not move. Then i just have a good cry and that’s it. In the morning i feel better.
One year later the disease seems to be stable, no symptoms, nothing. I am living in my little apartment in Antwerpen and doing some drawing and some temp jobs.
I feel sad sometimes, but that’s just ‘moods’ i say to myself, although i think i already realize it is not normal, i think i can handle it, even hide it from people. Until I burst out in tears at a French course.
I go to the doctor, i get the pills this time. I am shocked to feel the change after only two weeks. I didn’t realize how far i had gone already. I realized that before i had decided to take the pills i was actually living in slow motion. It had taken me until noon to get dressed. I had spent hours sitting at my desk just looking in front of me and thinking absolutely nothing. Just the basics of trying to eat properly and sometimes going for a walk took all of my energy (and i was doing these things because i was fighting the sadness).
I still started therapy again (it did help me the first time), but this time the only thing i could say to her was: I am scared and i am tired trying to be strong all the time. And just saying it didn’t make the fear go away.
But the medication seems to be working.
Again: one year later:
I meet my old boyfriend. The person who was a big cause (allthough not the only one) for the first depression. I see him in front of the hospital where i work. His brother has been committed in the psychiatry ward. We hug. I am a bit shook up because of meeting him, but it is ok.
A few days later, we decide to meet for coffee. We talk. About his work mostly and about his brother. He sais that he cannot imagine a depression lasting forever, people usually come out of it. I reply that sometimes suicide is the only way out. i don’t know why i say this, i say it without thinking.
We say goodbye and i go home.
I panick. This is the only good description of those two weeks. I panick.
Everything is so intense i feel like everyone is looking at me. I try to act normal at work. And i manage fine. It just feels like it is not me sitting there, like i am watching myself.
I get into a conversation with a coworker about boyfriends and marriage and I smile and pretend to agree and suddenly I think: I don’t care about this world, it’s not worth it. The first time i actually consider suicide, very rationally, without emotion. Just too tired to fight again and again. I cannot do this a third time…
I go to the doctor and try a different pill, but even before i start taking it i already feel better again. My mother made a nice comparison: it’s like when you open one door in your head just a bit, all those doors fly open and everything comes rushing out.
But my mother actually knows me. P doesn’t, this is very clear to me now. When i talk to her on the phone she tells me i should try to find a new boyfriend and work on my personality and that i just don’t try hard enough to be happy. I cannot believe what she has just said and throw down the phone.
But again, I can’t expect people to understand a depression. It makes no sense. I try to look at it as an illness.
For a long time i thought it was something which would inevitably always come back. Like it was part of me. Even between those depressions i had dark moods. But for the first time now, i discover the period between those moods seems to be getting bigger. Like my body starts forgetting. So maybe it isn’t part of my personality, just an illness i need to be aware of. I don’t know.
