“Depression
is humiliating. It turns intelligent, kind people into zombies
who can’t wash a dish or change their socks. It affects
the ability to think clearly, to feel anything, to ascribe
value to your children, your lifelong passions, your relative
good fortune. It scoops out your normal healthy ability to cope
with bad days and bad news, and replaces it with an
unrecognizable sludge that finds no pleasure, no delight, no
point in anything outside of bed. You alienate your friends
because you can’t comport yourself socially, you risk
your job because you can’t concentrate, you live in
moderate squalor because you have no energy to stand up, let
alone take out the garbage. You become pathetic and you know
it. And you have no capacity to stop the downward plunge. You
have no perspective, no emotional reserves, no faith that it
will get better. So you feel guilty and ashamed of your
inability to deal with life like a regular human, which
exacerbates the depression and the isolation. If you’ve
never been depressed, thank your lucky stars and back off the
folks who take a pill so they can make eye contact with the
grocery store cashier. No one on earth would choose the
nightmare of depression over an averagely turbulent normal
life.
It’s not an incapacity to cope with day to day living in the modern world. It’s an incapacity to function. At all. If you and your loved ones have been spared, every blessing to you. If depression has taken root in you or your loved ones, every blessing to you, too. No one chooses it. No one deserves it. It runs in families, it ruins families. You cannot imagine what it takes to feign normalcy, to show up to work, to make a dentist appointment, to pay bills, to walk your dog, to return library books on time, to keep enough toilet paper on hand, when you are exerting most of your capacity on trying not to kill yourself. Depression is real. Just because you’ve never had it doesn’t make it imaginary. Compassion is also real. And a depressed person may cling desperately to it until they are out of the woods and they may remember your compassion for the rest of their lives as a force greater than their depression. Have a heart. Judge not lest ye be judged.”
It’s not an incapacity to cope with day to day living in the modern world. It’s an incapacity to function. At all. If you and your loved ones have been spared, every blessing to you. If depression has taken root in you or your loved ones, every blessing to you, too. No one chooses it. No one deserves it. It runs in families, it ruins families. You cannot imagine what it takes to feign normalcy, to show up to work, to make a dentist appointment, to pay bills, to walk your dog, to return library books on time, to keep enough toilet paper on hand, when you are exerting most of your capacity on trying not to kill yourself. Depression is real. Just because you’ve never had it doesn’t make it imaginary. Compassion is also real. And a depressed person may cling desperately to it until they are out of the woods and they may remember your compassion for the rest of their lives as a force greater than their depression. Have a heart. Judge not lest ye be judged.”
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