The Human Condition
The thing that I find incredibly interesting about human nature is that everyone is different. I’m not being facetious. I know saying this isn’t some marvel revelation that will be quoted throughout centuries by young and old gleaming for wisdom for their lives. No, it is just a simple statement that is universally acknowledged in the hopes that my next statement will remain just as so.
Because people are different, we all experience depression in different ways and at varying levels.
People who know me personally wouldn’t think that I have depression. The term I use for myself is “high functioning.” I certainly didn’t know that I had depression for a while. My best friend has struggled with depression her whole life. I would say that she struggles in the “traditional” (air quotes used loosely), more widely accepted way of the term depression, with actions like secluding herself to her room and struggling to reach out to friends. After she told me she had depression, these were the physical actions that I interpreted as being “depressed.” Now, I am not reducing her symptoms to these things, but they are just examples to show you specific instances of how I thought depression looked like from the outside. I use to worry about her because she was the first person I personally knew who was honest with me about her personal life. At the time, I worried that I wouldn’t know how to connect or sympathize because I hadn’t struggled with depression. I looked for ways to send her cute texts with funny phrases or things to be grateful for because that was the solution that was regurgitated to me through social media and religious beliefs. These things are nice and I doubt that my friend was angry at me for thinking of her and sending her “daily inspirational texts." As a 20 years old, I didn’t know much more than what was sold to me through the Sunday morning preaching of encouragement through positive thinking and praying for the person next to you. Through my best friend, I was able to learn more about the human condition that affects more of us than we are aware of.
My journey into understanding my own depression is very different from how others experience theirs. Depression doesn’t run in my family — at least that I know of. It wasn’t something that I ever thought that I could be susceptible to because I grew up in a strong Christian household without the time to even consider being depressed because, quite honestly, there wasn’t time for it. But as I moved out and started my own life after college, my innocence faded and the hard work of juggling daily decision-making became my life. I can't exactly pinpoint the event that started my depression. It was cunning and it sneaked up on me in many little ways that now I can only see through hindsight. At first, for me it looked like a struggling college student, working full time and going to school full time in her last semester trying to graduate from college to better herself. Then it graduated with me to shopping from dollar tree to get my food because my job didn’t pay me enough to live sustainable on my own, praying every day that my boyfriend would feed me so that I wouldn’t go hungry. Funny enough, it didn’t just leave me there. It transformed as life improved. As I progress to stable jobs that paid more, I was suddenly surrounded by people who judged my every word, each piece of my clothing I had on, and my personality instead of my job performance. And then of course, planning a wedding always makes one feel as incompetent as possible because you can't ever make anyone happy because something is always inevitably wrong! Lastly, while learning how to be a wife, I was let go from a contract position because the company was "going in a different direction."
Through a string of hard years and more circumstances than I have words for, my emotions piled high with no place to go and only one person to inflict their rage on. That’s exactly what I had, rage. Pretty soon, it was all I had. I didn’t notice it, but after a while, the only emotion that I could feel was anger. When I finally started to realize my emotional capacity had been limited to levels of irritation, I didn’t quite care much. My work load had just increased at my job as my immediate supervisor quit, leaving me to take over her duties. This event was the icing on the cake. As soon as I would come home from work, I would start to have a panic attack, my emotions coming out the only way that they could - forcefully. I didn’t know what to do. It didn’t take long before all pressure inside my chest finally became too much. One day, just walking around the house, I began to weep uncontrollably. This might not sound like much to you. Would it carry more weight if I added that previously, I hadn’t cried for about a year?
Scott, my poor husband, tried to console me. However, I couldn’t tell him at the time what was wrong. I could only articulate that I wanted to run away. I wanted to leave and not come back. I babbled on about what I could figure out in the moment, which wasn’t much, and he listened. He held me and comforted me. He was quiet. He didn’t try to fix it. The best thing was he just listened. I told him I couldn’t think. I told him there was too much pressure, too much going on. I told him that I couldn’t feel anything. I told him I wanted to run away. For the first time in a while, I felt like someone heard me. He heard me.
That weekend, my husband did me a kindness, a kindness I will never forget. On Saturday, first thing he took my phone and kept it away from me. Early that morning, he took me to the beach (pre COVID). I wasn’t dressed in a bathing suit. It was the middle of November. I was in jeans and combat boots. We took off our shoes together and walked on the sand and sat down. We stayed for two hours, sitting and listening to the waves. I brought my journal and for the first time in months, I poured my heart out onto the pages. I let it all out, everything that I was feeling, mad about NOT feeling, and what I was thinking. From the beach, we went to breakfast at one of our favorite little diner spots with the best food. I ate whatever I wanted without a care in the world. We sat, talked, and enjoyed each other’s company. For the rest of the day, Scott took me around doing activities that I loved and made me feel more myself than I had felt in a long time. I didn’t know the agenda. He just took me. I had forgotten who I was with all the pain and built up emotions that were messing me up inside. He was helping me remember. Throughout the day, neither of us used our phones. There was no music playing in the car as we drove. When we came home for the night, we didn’t even use electricity for lights. We used our camping lanterns and made a fort to sleep in in the living room - complete with sheets hanging from the ceiling, strung across our couches.
When I woke up the next morning, I sat and read a book in our fort. I watched him sleep softly. As the sun rose and it filled the room with dancing light across our sheet fort, it was as if the light turned on inside me. If felt as if I finally let the breath out that I didn’t know I was holding. Even though I had been seeing a therapist for over a year, that was the moment that made all the colors brighter in the room. He did what I couldn’t. He found my reset button, the one that I had been trying for months to articulate to myself that I needed to press. Upon reflection, I was looking in all the wrong places. At first, I was in awe. As I sat there and looked at the lights across our fort, I had no words. Then, the feeling of relief rushed over me as understanding began to peek through. Grounded. Strong. Assured. I felt alive. I felt my chest drop to a normal level with no pressure behind it. I almost felt concave as if my exhale would close my rib cage too much and crush my lungs. I was unsure of how to breathe normally. As I began to adjust to this new found sensation, I began to feel a great sense of gratitude. I got back down on mattress (taken from the bedroom) and snuggled up next to my sleeping husband, grateful for him.
Now, when I talk with my friend, I listen to her with a new understanding and a new appreciation for everything that she has gone through and for the person she has become in the process. I also find connection on a new level with her. I no longer have the thought that depression looks the same in everyone. I no longer look for the symptoms that are so widely sold to us. Depression takes different forms and has different symptoms; however, the pain is all felt the same. I will forever be grateful for my husband as we are on this journey together to build a life we love. I will also be grateful to the people around me who chose to fight everyday despite what they feel. These people are the real heroes.
