It doesn’t always go your way.
I wish I had been told when I was far younger that this idea of life... sucks. That there are so many days where getting off the couch feels like more work than solving global warming or figuring out gun control legislation. That the so-called simple things like brushing your teeth, putting on clothes, picking up your keys and walking to your car... that these simple things can and will be a bigger accomplishment than stories heard of hero childbirth or bomb detonation. I wish I had known what this would feel like. I like to think I would have avoided it.
The older I get and the more I learn about mental illness, the more I realize that depression and anxiety are by far their own brand of illness. Granted, similar to illnesses such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety seem to have exact prototypes, expectations, and symptoms. We’re told at the same time, however, that there are always exceptions - always cases and people who break the mold. I’ve grown weary of these expectations of illness if there is such a large number of individualized diagnoses. Everyone’s illness is their own - or at least that’s what I’ve been taught. And yet, we turn to textbooks, diagnoses manuals, and case studies to diagnose the disease. Once you’re labeled, you can be medicated. And once you’re medicated, you can blend in.
Depression and anxiety tend to have a far greater chance of going unnoticed. Symptoms often appear more inward, or at the very least are more socially acceptable. When I am highly symptomatic, I spend time alone. No one knows what I’m doing during that time, and that thought allows me the freedom to just be. Spending time alone, although sometimes frowned upon in our social environment, feels too easy. I’m not hearing voices, and I’m not delusional. Or, if I am, no one is there to notice it. That’s comforting...
I don’t remember ever being diagnosed with depression or anxiety - just medicated. I have been off and on meds for the past seven years. And it’s weird to say that, because no matter how long I spend off of meds before starting up again, I always feel like they’re a normal part of me. As normal as my addiction to the show Dexter, nicotine, caffeine, or cute little garden gnomes, I suppose. So I have adjusted to the fact that life... sucks. I don’t mean that in an over-emotional, pessimistic, we’re all failures type of way. I do see beauty in every day life. But, I was never expecting all the shit. I wasn’t taught about all the fucking shit. The shit was hidden from me - from everyone. Forced to find the shit on our own, and armed with no defense once we found it. I wasn’t surprised when I first went on meds; but rather, relieved that something finally made sense.
The more I make sense of everything that’s happened in my life, the more I hate self-reflection. I don’t think we’re ever really ready for what we find when we look inward. I know I wasn’t. It’s quite the lonely feeling, depression. Not that I expect to be told that once you’re diagnosed with depression, you’re the hit of the party...the party animal ready to stand in the spotlight with all your buddies. Maybe I expected to have more of a community - but that’s the thing I’ve found with depression; that people don’t tend to discuss their symptoms.
I feel I have come to a point in my life where I have two choices: take medication, or don’t. What appears to be a fairly easy decision has caused me a great deal of turmoil in the past seven years. What I’ve found is that the symptoms are often very similar whether off or on medication. How life differs is the duration of symptoms. For example, I am always going to be a person who cries fairly often. While on medication, I cry in short, very intense almost sudden outbursts. While off medication, I cry a little all day long. So life has become a fairly simple choice: how much time can I allow to crying and letting it all out?
For the time being, I often feel content with being on medication. It’s so easy to go back to feelings of giving up hope, being desperate for help, and worries of becoming emotionless, empty, or dull. I feel, however, that being dull is the least of my concerns. Often I’m aware that I’m secluding myself from others, or that when I am around loved ones, may appear “dull.” What concerns me, though, is if I feel that way when I’m all alone. Sitting here alone in my apartment, I feel boring, yes... But also what I describe as simply feeling at home. With everything that has occurred in my life in the past few years, that feeling is what I value the very most. And I’ve come to learn, with all the shit in life, that the only way I can have that “home,” is to create it myself.