Tw: Mentions of suicidal ideology and depression as a whole
I remember getting back home from the psychiatrist when I was 23 excited and relieved that I finally had an explanation as to why life seemed so dull to me. I remember telling my friend and showing her the bottle of fluoxetine (prozac) resting on my night stand.
“That’s not something to be proud of you know?”
oof.
People don’t fucking get depression, not even the ones that study it.
I wasn’t proud, I was just so happy that someone with a medical degree had finally validated what I already believed. That I suffered from depression, that equilibrium was a little harder for me to reach. And frankly it really wouldn’t take an expert to diagnose me because it’s so jarringly obvious that I run on a ticking clock.
For those of you that don’t know what Prozac is, known as Fluoxetine by medical professionals, it’s a serotonin reuptake inhibitor. What does that mean? it means that my brain, at a chemical level, needs outside help in order for me to not just experience happiness, but to be able to balance my mood. It ensures that my brain gets the chance to absorb the correct amount of serotonin. So that I may feel okay. Not great, not amazing, not bursting at the seams with joy—just okay.
And maybe that doesn’t sound too bad and truly it isn’t but then you take into consideration the fact that I gotta take this shit for god only knows how long. Because I don’t know, and my psychiatrist certainly doesn’t either. And I’ve gone off it before and I’ve been miserable and my depressive episodes sync up like scheduled performance reviews.
Every couple of weeks, like clockwork, I wake up exhausted. I skip breakfast, I order lunch and I scrap around for dinner. I don’t shower, and I truly mean to the point that I stink so bad its as if I’m rotting from inside—and maybe I am. I eat too little or too much, I sleep 12+ hours on the weekends and 3-4 on the weekdays. And as time moves on and things get worse and my body debilitates from the junk food and lack of sleep my mind goes with it. Then suddenly I’m thinking about the cars that could hit me, or maybe I take a fall that’s a little too rough, maybe someone has it out for me and wants to hurt me really badly. And suddenly suicide ideology is all around me pulling me in further like the tide.
And this is just what happens if my brain has decided were feeling pretty good. But I miss class, I miss assignments, my grades slip, I forget to start documentation and suddenly I’m a month behind on it. And my credit card is blocked and my account is dwindling and there’s food rotting at the back of the fridge. And I trudge along campus on a Monday morning dragging a trash bag behind me whilst the shame holds my hand.
So to think that my relief over my diagnosis, to think that finally having a way to explain my brain, to know what the root cause is and work at it so that it’s not a burden forever could ever be perceived as proudness is such a fucking insult.
I think that’s the moment I realized people are just never gonna get it. They’re going to resent you, curse you, cradle you. Everything under the sun before they respect you or even try to understand you.
People will belittle you, they will invalidate any struggle you may suffer through and then crucify you for seeking help. There’s not fucking winning with these people. You can’t talk about your depression because suddenly you’re endorsing it or god forbid proud.
And what if I am?
I can’t be proud of picking myself up, walking into a doctors office, and laying myself so bare in the hopes of finally receiving some help? I can’t be proud of the fact that I know any day might be the day I wake up miserable and still choose to keep waking up? Every single fucking day. Fuck I am proud of my depression not because I enjoy drowning in it but because every day it tries to overtake me and I’m still standing.
I know that it’s coming, I know that I’ll explode any second, I know that I might idealize death a little too much for it to be comfortable but I am still around. And you will never be able to get rid of me. You’ll feel me long after I’m gone.
I refuse to be shoved into some pathetic storyline to make others feel better about themselves.
Frankly I’m tired of being babied for my depression, being treated as if I’m made of crystal and could crack at any moment. I’m tired of being pitied and made to feel bad for just being sad. I’m fucking sad and okay sometimes I think about dying but that doesn’t make me a charity case it makes me human. It doesn’t make me your overnight project, you can’t just throw some sympathy my way or give me a hug or expel this depression out of me just because you feel bad for me.
I don’t want to be pitied, I want to be taken seriously. I want people to listen to what this does to me, what it looks like, and still hold the same amount of respect.
Because I go to school and I go to work and I run this fucking blog and I keep myself above the surface of the water and you probably couldn’t do what I do. And yet you pity me, as if I’m something to fix, as if there’s something wrong with me.
Maybe if people would stop questioning me over my diagnosis, interrogating me the moment they hear I’m on medication. Maybe if they looked at me with less pity in their eyes. Maybe if they offered me a sliver of respect I wouldn’t feel so fucking useless.
Everyone is just so woke now a days. Everyone knows that depressed people are just wounded little animals that need your saving because they could never save themselves, isn’t that right? isn’t that what you like to believe?
Everyone is so woke, they know therapy speak and they know what ‘boundaries’ mean, they know that ‘our bodies are temples,’ but they’ll look you up and down if you’ve gained too much weight, they’ll congratulate you if you’ve lost weight even if it’s because you’re not eating right.
Everyone is so woke they know mentally ill people exist, they just don’t want to run into us.
Everyone is so woke now a days but that doesn’t extend to women of color, or lesbians, or disabled women, or trans women, or anyone that isn’t white, cis, and straight. Then suddenly your depression is just an accessory like the sequenced bags they carry around.
Woke, woke woke, you’re all so fucking woke and yet you lack empathy. And you let the backhanded insults roll of your tongue to make people feel bad when they never even asked for this shit.
I don’t want you to be woke I want you to give a fuck, to listen and sometimes to just shut the fuck up.
I’m depressed not dead.
I’m a person not a diagnosis.