The Rest of

No One Wants to Read This

When I talk to other depressed people, I frequently hear them say—“I can’t tell anyone about this because it’s too depressing. No one wants to hear this. I don’t want to bring other people down.” Or some variation of this. There’s the idea that the depression itself makes us disgusting and that we can never say what we are feeling. As a result, many depressed people don’t have the chance to feel truly seen. Their relationships feel fake and the depression increases, because they don’t have anyone who they can actually talk to.

This is why a lot of suicide prevention talks are about making yourself open enough to allow other people to tell you if they are depressed. It’s an important part of letting people be seen and heard. It can be scary, though. The closer you are to the person, the more difficult it may be to hear how bad things really are in their head. And the more you react strongly, the more you may make it impossible for them to talk to you again. Especially if you make them feel ashamed of their feelings, like it is their own fault or if you tell them they clearly aren’t “trying hard enough” to feel better.

I try VERY hard not to tell other people how really really bad it can get in my head. For one thing, it isn’t particularly interesting. “I wish I was dead” on repeat a thousand times a day isn’t the kind of creative thinking that I like to imagine makes me a scintillating conversationalist—or writer. But depression can be caused by thinking that is stuck in a loop. It can also be not thinking very much at all, just moving forward slowly through the day. It can be sleeping a lot because nothing seems interesting. I think all of these are fairly typical signs of depression. But there are others.

One of the most difficult to identify forms of depression is what can be called “functional depression." This is when the depressed person just keeps moving forward through daily tasks without any visible sign of problems. Why does this happen? Well, because the depressed person is trying to keep it together. But also because they don’t feel like they’re “allowed” to stop doing anything that is necessary for other people and take care of themselves. For me, I still struggle with the sense that I am worthy of care and attention, that it’s all right for me to prioritize myself over others. Even typing those words in is difficult. It feels wrong—evil, even. How dare I consider that? And so I was—and am—extremely functional when depressed. Sometimes when I am depressed is when I am actually the best at my work, because I don’t have anything else to distract me and I am forcing myself to focus on only one thing.

I struggle with knowing how useful it is to write about depression. It feels like I will be labeled a constant “downer” as a writer, and one of the primary reasons that I write is because I want to help other people. I want my writing to make other people’s lives easier. (You see this again, how I prioritize others over myself?) But I’ve been trying to be more honest because I believe honesty is good for me. It is also good for other people, I’m convinced. I believe I have a gift with words and with courage to say things other people keep hidden, so I’m going to keep trying to write about depression from the inside. It’s not gone. I don’t know if it will ever be gone. There is an important balance between not feeding it by focusing on the worst thoughts and cycling through them even more and not telling myself that I’m not worthy to say what I’m actually feeling. I’m trying to straddle that balance. I hope it helps someone out there, too.