QOTD

[geekchick]

(If you've wondered why I've been so quiet here for ages, and/or why I haven't been doing a lot socially, the first paragraph is at least a partial explanation.)

Allie at Hyperbole and a Half, Depression, Part Two:

At first, I'd try to explain that it's not really negativity or sadness anymore, it's more just this detached, meaningless fog where you can't feel anything about anything — even the things you love, even fun things — and you're horribly bored and lonely, but since you've lost your ability to connect with any of the things that would normally make you feel less bored and lonely, you're stuck in the boring, lonely, meaningless void without anything to distract you from how boring, lonely, and meaningless it is.

But people want to help. So they try harder to make you feel hopeful and positive about the situation. You explain it again, hoping they'll try a less hope-centric approach, but re-explaining your total inability to experience joy inevitably sounds kind of negative; like maybe you WANT to be depressed. The positivity starts coming out in a spray — a giant, desperate happiness sprinkler pointed directly at your face. And it keeps going like that until you're having this weird argument where you're trying to convince the person that you are far too hopeless for hope just so they'll give up on their optimism crusade and let you go back to feeling bored and lonely by yourself.

And that's the most frustrating thing about depression. It isn't always something you can fight back against with hope. It isn't even something — it's nothing. And you can't combat nothing. You can't fill it up. You can't cover it. It's just there, pulling the meaning out of everything. That being the case, all the hopeful, proactive solutions start to sound completely insane in contrast to the scope of the problem.

If you never read it the first time around, her post Adventures in Depression is also excellent for understanding what it's like. [Edit: For me, at any rate.]

Comments

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

(nods) hope I struck a reasonable balance and didn't spray you with positivity this weekend... I was trying to engage and distract... kind of like trying to offer a hand through the fog, rather than convince you it wasn't (or shouldn't somehow) be there.

(gentle hug)

[rednikki.livejournal.com]

It was a great post. I found myself nodding along all the way. There's a couple of different kinds of depression, and she nailed down a specific type that I think some people are less familiar with.

[geekchick]

Yeah, I really relate to a lot of what she describes, but I know not everybody does.

[just-the-ash.livejournal.com]

That was nail-on-head for me. I go to the doctor so people will stop making that sound. I know perfectly well what -- who, rather -- triggered this latest bout, and I know that it's over bullshit, and I wouldn't change a thing about standing up on my sister's behalf. But hell's bells, it's like being flattened by a steamroller in a Warner Brothers cartoon. All I can do is blink at the camera and hope to become 3-D again eventually.

[datagoddess.livejournal.com]

I'm always darkly amused when I admit to suicidal planning, because it makes everyone other than Dan freak out. I use it more as a gauge of how broken my brain is, kind of like how I know when the weather is changing because my knee hurts differently.

[vizsludraugas.livejournal.com]

I thought of you when I read that. *hugs*

[telnar.livejournal.com]

I don't pretend to understand what that feels like, but one thought which came to mind was that if hope doesn't work as a model, what about framing short run tasks as building infrastructure? There are probably things you can accomplish now which you can predict that you'll be glad to have done in the future, even though they don't feel important today.