Another post about depression

     Depression is a very real thing, and it's difficult to deal with. For a long time, I felt worthless. I was tired all the time, and I couldn't focus. It was like a gloomy haze had settled over my life and made it hard to breathe, hard to get out of bed in the morning, hard to go to class, harder to go to work. Before coming to college I had never skipped class, but now it seemed like there was no point in going. My favorite courses that had thrilled me at the beginning of the semester had lost their luster and become devoid of meaning.

     As I fell behind in my classes due to memory problems and simply not caring, I became more and more hopeless. One day I started thinking that it would be easier to end it permanently. Nobody would miss me, except maybe my roommates and family. My days became internal battles between my despair and the tiny bit of self-preservation I still had left. I started eating healthier, exercising more, all the things people say will help you be happy. My body felt somewhat better, but the darkness was still there.

     After the semester ended and I moved back to my parents' house, it became easier to dwell on my grades and tell myself that I was a quantifiable failure. All you had to do was not suck, and you even screwed that up. You fail at life. I was my own toughest critic, and it made me hypersensitive to criticism. I felt like I could do nothing right, and mostly just stayed in my room all day. I was avoiding everything. I avoided the very friends who could help me because I told myself that if they wanted to see me, they'd talk to me.

     But finally I got help. At first I was skeptical--just take these pills and everything will magically go away? I took them anyway, trusting in the judgement of my doctor. The medication took a while to take effect, and it was hard to ascribe any positive results to them. Little by little, things changed.

     How I am today is so much better. The fog is gone, and I can see things clearly. Sometimes I wake up and just want to smile. I have ups and downs, but the downs don't last nearly as long. I feel normal, and it is amazing.

     The thing is, it's hard to get help by yourself when you're in the middle of a depressive episode. You think that it's your own fault, that it's because you're such a weak, sucky failure that you feel like crap all the time. You think that if you went to a doctor, they'd just laugh at you. You know that there's a stigma on mental illness in our culture, and you don't want people to know how broken you are. You get told things by well-meaning people like "choose to be happy" or "find out what you're doing wrong in your life, and when you change it you'll be happy" and it confirms that there's something within you that's just wrong and you can't do anything about it.

     If you knew that your friend was sick, but wasn't seeking treatment, wouldn't you want to help them? Do the same for mental/emotional illness. When you notice that a friend hasn't been around lately, and hasn't been talking on social media sites as much as they used to, reach out to them. If a family member doesn't seem like themselves, talk to them. Simple acts show them that you care. If you've told a friend that they should see a doctor or a therapist, don't just leave it there: offer to take them, or at least tag along. Support makes a difference--I know that I never went to the therapy office at BYU pretty much just because I was scared to go alone.

TL;DR: Depression and other illnesses suck, be nice to people.