"I don't understand how I get into this condition of isolation and submergence in my thoughts. It is really strange and I hardly understand it, but I feel as if I cannot speak or express myself in any way. It scares me, for a while I am fine: cheerful, optimistic, with desire and in another moment fearful, insecure, inexpressive, with many thoughts and feelings. I really don't understand it. It scares me.
"I feel that everyone sees me, that they talk about me. I don't know how to deal with that. I see the world as huge, too much for me. I would like to be in a capsule or in a place where no one sees me, where I don't contact anyone, where it's just me, my world and me. Going out scares me, staying in bed makes me feel useless and wasting my time."
"I don't want to talk. I feel like what I'm saying is meaningless. I don't even know what I came to work for. My mind is not clear. I don't think clearly. Because of me what we bought was lost. I just want to isolate myself or die. I can't take this anymore.
The above paragraphs are excerpts from the diary of a depressed person. But not of someone with a passing moment of sadness, but of someone diagnosed with the often misunderstood illness called Depression.
In this illness, because yes, yes it is an illness like any other; suicidal ideas haunt the mind. One thinks and feels that the best thing to do is to no longer exist and stop being a burden to others. It is believed that others, especially family and friends, have enough with their ailments without having to put up with it. Only sleep seems to be the way out to stop thinking and feeling.
One wants to go out, to do things but it is a great burden for a depressive to go out and face the world. You can try but it is difficult. He feels at times that he no longer has the strength, he wants to give up. "I'm sick of pills, psychologists, doctors, all that. I can't take it anymore," many of them say at certain times.
The absent-mindedness and forgetfulness are something normal, if you are going to do something and you forget, you have to go to the place two or three times because you forget what you were going to do. There is also a lot of anxiety about eating.
Depression is really hell. It is an anxiety that eats you up inside, it is feeling that the world is cruel and at the same time recognizing that he has not done anything to you, that sometimes he is not to blame. It is feeling bad and not knowing why. It is to lie in bed and have crowded thoughts in your mind of uselessness, guilt, sadness, the reason? there is no reason. You can't find it, that's the nightmare of Depression as a disease. Feeling in a bottomless pit from which you want to get out and feel good but your mind, your body, your emotions are on "pause", suspended, depressed.
It is wanting to enjoy and share with your family and not being able to give more; as if your batteries were low, the world passes in front of you and you cannot keep up with it. It is crying because of the despair of not living normally and just wanting to be alone because the world is too big and overwhelming for you. It is crying because you feel guilty that other people's lives often have to adapt to you because they have to and want to take care of you or help you in this process. It is crying of sadness, crying almost uncontrollably because you do not want to be like this, you want to live to the fullest but no matter how hard you try many times you can not.
That is Depression. It is that painful and overwhelming, and many, many times totally hopeless.
PS: If you know someone with Depression first do as much research as you can about this disease, ignorance on the part of those close to you is the biggest cause of those who suffer from it feeling misunderstood by those around them and try to help them but do not know how. Learn as much as you can about it. And finally, talk to the depressed person (if he/she is willing to do it, do not force him/her if he/she does not want to talk); not all cases are the same, there are several levels of Depression apart from the fact that each person is different in his/her thinking, feeling and in the causes that led him/her to suffer this disease. If you want to help, learn more and teach less, talk less and listen more.
You can also contact someone who has suffered from it, sometimes nothing beats the experience to learn about something. I am available as a good experienced in the matter. I also suffer from Depression.*
