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What it feels like to have depression?

Being depressed is having these constant feelings of extremely deep sadness wrapped around you, which never seem to disappear.  It’s always in the background waiting for you. Just like a monster that waits for its prey. Its favourite food? Your anger, fear or any negative feeling. It starts eating it and expanding, expanding until it ends up eating you alive.

You can wake up totally fine. Start to remember who you are and where you are, like any other human being. Except, when you’re depressed, the negative thoughts pop out immediately after : “Right, who am I? I am that loser who couldn’t even do …” “I am nobody, whom no one likes to be with…” “I am the stupidest person…” and it keeps repeating repeating, repeating all day along until all your energy fades and you can’t even move or leave your bed.

Depression is like having a parasite in your brain. It makes you believe that you are worthless, alone and deserving to suffer even more. It uses your worst fears, weaknesses, failures, every sad memory or bad comment you experienced to convince you of how useless and weak you are. Until you start to really believe them and automatically acting like a loser.

Now, you can do nothing, you are paralysed. You want to work, you want to achieve, you want to even just wake up and go wash your face or eat anything because you’re starving. But no. “You can’t get up!” “Because you don’t deserve any of this”, “you should starve”, “you are a failure”, “you are nothing”, “you must die…”

“Why can't I just wake up? It's so simple!”  “Just sit, put your damn feet on the ground and get up, you dumb! Why can't you even do that?” “why can't I? Why am I so weak? Whyyyy ???” “Until when am I going to be this way?” And those thoughts keep repeating and sinking you further and further until you’re drowning.

Your head is going to explode. Your body hurts. You can’t think or even concentrate on anything. You can’t understand what’s happening outside of your head. You just wish to silence your demons. “Just close these damn eyes and sleep” “You’re just tired, sleep!  Please, sleep!” You end up sleeping more, 10 hours, maybe 12. But, when you wake up, you’re always tired, as if you’ve been awake all your life.

Sometimes, you get insomnia. The thoughts in your head keep popping and popping, you can’t stop them no matter what you do. Your head hurts, the pain is so intense that all you wish to do is hit your damn head on the wall or maybe just take all the pills you can to silence it forever… But you remember the people you love, your parents crying out their eyes out of guilt… You just bear with it until you’re completely exhausted and… Sleep…Again. 

Despite all that, you can still have good days. You can wake up and have a very small demon. Telling you shit like always. But this time, it's different. “I am going to ignore you today. I feel good. This day is MY DAY!” So you wake up with a big smile, afraid, but that’s Okay. “I am going to be Okay no matter what”. You’ll do everything you can to catch up the work you left. The more you achieve, the more you feel good about yourself. “I can finally breathe. Maybe I am okay now? Maybe I am starting to heal?” you feel awesome. You love everyone.  You even start to forgive yourself, catching up with friends, making amends, doing your best.

Until one day, someone makes a nasty comment. The next day, you fail at something. The day after, someone breaks your heart. “Hey, you’re okay. It happens, just keep walking, everything’s going to be fine!”.  Deep inside, you’re really hurting, you feel extremely bad. But, you know that if you let yourself drown in sorrow again, it will be over for you. You don’t want that. “I must be strong”. So you resist, you keep telling yourself you’re fine even though you’re not, until you can no longer pretend.

You can have a mental breakdown over practically anything. You may fall, lose a stupid paper, see a video of a sick cute cat on social media and cry over it the next second, until you pass out. Sometimes, you might miss a deadline and freak out so hard that you even forget how to breathe. In a second, all your fears pile up in your head. You picture your failure, the shame, all the worst scenarios that could happen and pass out …

When you wake up, you would understand that it was just a mere panic attack. You would feel even worse because now you’re ashamed of it… “How can I be so useless? Failing because of a deadline? And Passing out? Really??? I’m so stupid”… Repeat.

“I thought I was okay! I thought I got through it all! Why can’t I just bear with it like everyone else does? I am not the only one who’s struggling, so why can’t I get past it?... That’s because I’m Weak. Weak and useless and …”