So, Depression...? PART 1

So, You’re depressed are you?

Poem #31

The problem with my parents is that they mistake depression for a feeling

And yes, it can be

A lot of you ‘feel’ depressed

But feelings fade

Depression doesn’t

 

See, I’ve been depressed so long I’ve watched my depression change form

And right now depression is a house

A six walled bachelor’s flat in the middle of a dessert on a cliff by the sea

One of the walls is glass

Often I sit there and stare at the water beneath me

Forgetting the darkness, I’m in

Forgetting there’s no water coming out the sink

Or electricity for the fridge

Or food for my belly

 

I just stare at the sea

Convinced that If I look hard enough

I’ll find a mermaid

Who will fall in love with the way I know how to look

The way I know how to see them

Like they’re the only one who matters

More than life itself

And they’ll break me out of this house as if I don’t have the key tied around my neck in a noose.

 ...

I wrote this poem recently, reflecting on how far I’ve come and how sad I felt sitting in my friend’s bachelor flat that she had let me house sit for the duration of the lockdown. I don’t remember what time it was when I wrote it but I remember staring out the window and imagining the sky was an ocean, wondering why do I feel so horrible about life.

I often tell the story of how I got to become depressed the first time by summarizing it in two words: ‘Grief-induced’. I was 15 – having been filled with so much anger and confusion as to why someone I held so dear to me had passed away so suddenly. How they were such a lovely person who didn’t deserve to leave the way they did. It almost felt like I was refusing to accept the fact that they were gone and so instead of mourning my loss, I simply became mad about it and refused to acknowledge the death. That anger (which in our household I wasn’t allowed to express) was suppressed. I then developed a method of suppressing all my ‘negative’ emotions. For the next couple of months, I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t talk about anything.

I lived most of my life in my head. Things would happen and I would react in my mind. Life became very dark, very quickly. I felt very empty and like nothing mattered. There was a constant feeling of heaviness in my chest. Which again, I ignored and carried on with whatever ‘duties’ I had to do in my life. I was in denial about my condition for a long time.

The first time I contemplated suicide (or dying in general) was the first time I acknowledged that something was wrong and that I had to change something. I was so full with emotion that I would get triggered by the simplest of things. I’d get irritated by the sun in the morning, or hate seeing others having a good time because it was something I couldn’t access. I cried every night, couldn’t pray anymore, couldn’t sing. I truly hated existing. I then decided that something really had to change, because I couldn’t go on like this.

So I googled methods of getting over depression. Dug out my bible and prayed using the only words I could muster up the strength to say: ‘help me.’

If you read my poetry, you’ll discover that I often describe depression as a place, instead of a feeling or a state of being, like I've done in the poem above. The story I’ve just told is my first run-in with depression. That time, depression was an abyss. It felt like I was in a rundown, abandoned dark town. I, was siting inside a hole in the ground. The longer I stayed depressed the deeper the hole got, and the darker the town became. Deciding I wanted to get better was an act of climbing out of that abyss, which, even today is one of the hardest thing I've ever had to do. Since one, I was doing it by myself and in secret because I didn’t want anyone to know that I was depressed, especially my parents. Two, depression is a battle of the mind and heart; everything happens inside you.