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2011/12/27: Depression

Created: Tue 27 Dec 2011 17:52:08 EST / Modified: Wed 28 Dec 2011 01:44:55 EST

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So I'd decided "y'know what, I really don't have to make a big exhaustive 'presents I got'" post. I wasn't expecting to have to make this instead, though. Mostly I'm writing this because I'm inept and terrible at explaining things, so this is a way to get it out in a relatively straightforward manner where it will hopefully be more coherent. And, y'know, just to get it out.

So ... depression. I don't have actual "clinical depression," as such; but sometimes I get episodes of feeling really shitty, which can have similar, if lesser, symptoms/results to "actual" depression. Attempts to appeal to humor never work for very long, if at all. Now, I have several friends who do suffer from depression, and I have taken pains to educate myself on what it might be like, and how to talk to someone who's depressed and how not to talk to someone who's deppressed. I understand that depression isn't necessarily rational, and you can't "logic" your way out of depression; I understand that the conscious answer to "Why?" might not be wholly accurate (by dint of merely being a conscious answer, which is going to be muddled by the depression to begin with), and even if there is something specific you can point to for what set off a particular episode, it might be completely random and pointless. I also know that depression is a lying bastard. All this knowledge kind of helps me, most of the time, when I get these little episodes, but it's not always easy to convey any part of this to other people. This paragraph contains links to a lot of reading material, after all.

Now, yesterday I had an episode of depression which was set off by ... a kinda stupid thing which isn't really relevant right now (see the "completely random and pointless" link above), and which was, in fact, genuinely partly my fault instead of Weird Emotional Shit. This depression actually got to the point where I was seriously thinking about shutting down my website, temporarily or permanently, and how I might go about doing that (no, I'm not actually going to go through with it, don't worry). So ... when I logged in at my various online hangouts, usually the first thing I told people who asked how I was doing was that I was depressed. Mostly, their immediate reaction was to express sympathy.

Except in one case. This was someone who I considered a close friend, you understand, and I felt that I could confide in her about my depression. She said "What's up?" after I logged on, and when I said that I was depressed, her response was something along the lines of "I'm not sure how to rephrase that question." I attempted to explain part of the kinda-stupid-reason, because this was one of the specific things that was on my mind at the time, and she became critical of my response. This had the effect of making me angry and even more depressed, and I logged off in a huff.

Today, when I logged back on, I discovered that she'd cut certain ties with me because I was being a "spoiled brat" when she'd just been trying to understand the "reasons" for my depression.

I hope you understand why this is making me feel even worse.

(Just in case, though, it was the apparent(-to-me) lack of sympathy, plus the fact that it seemed to me like she was focusing on "there must be a reason for it" to the exclusion of actually acknowledging these feelings in the first place, and further completely invalidating my genuine, depressed emotions by entirely writing off a bad reaction to this apparent lack of sympathy as "being a spoiled brat.")

My attempts to explain the situation to her and other people also fell kind of flat because of my aforementioned ineptitude, which resulted in nobody getting the whole story, and further resulted in a feedback-loop of lack-of-understanding, culminating in me exploding and snapping at some people. After I'm done making this post I'm going to have to go and apologize to some people. I'm also doing my best not to be judgmental towards this friend for obviously not having as much detailed knowledge of depression as I do, but still. (EDIT: She responded to this by saying she has, in fact, been diagnosed with clinical depression. She didn't respond to any other part of it, though.)

So ... yeah. Writing this was kind of cathartic. I'm not sure how much better I feel after I'm done writing it, though.

(In before somebody complains that I'm only focusing on my own feelings (see: approximately half the links in that paragraph-full-of-links there; see also the bit about "humor never works for me" if anyone was trying to get themselves banned by complaining in jest).)

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