A field guide to growing up without growing apart
Depression and mental health are topics that we’re warned about during our teens, you know, those sensitive and formative years when everyone’s a bit angsty. But it seems to me that I’ve personally known more people struggling with these mental issues in my twenties than […]
Life goes on, doesn’t it? Back in December I had to say goodbye to my husband, knowing I wouldn’t see him again for 4+ months. At the same time, I had 16 weeks of student teaching stretching out in front of me, an experience I […]
I hate that depression is a thing.
Last week when Cindy posted about possibly being depressed I cringed a bit at the word, feeling fairly confident that Cindy’s low mood was just that, a bit of a down time in a lifetime of millions of other emotions. To call it depression is to align it with the ‘real’ kind that brings to mind drugs, shrinks and so many other dark connotations. Surely Cindy isn’t THAT bad, I told myself, real depression is a chemical, biological imbalance that definitely isn’t her.
But what is ‘real depression’ and who has it anyway? I have countless friends who’ve told my they’re depressed over the years, ignoring me as I advised against drugs and insisted we all get low sometimes. I tell myself they’re over reacting as they go to weekly counseling sessions and post melancholy facebook status updates, told them to drink more water and get more exercise as they pulled away from the world. I’ve never quite believed they were really depressed, categorizing them more as bored, lazy, unsure, insecure, scared or just plain 20-something. Depression is for other people, not for smart, capable people who are just in a rut.
But yesterday my brother told me he’s been at the lowest part of his life for the last few weeks, that he’s really felt this badly for a few years now but has been keeping it hidden, that he doesn’t trust another person in the entire world with all the darkness that is the real him.
At first I reacted like I always do when people I know to be fully capable and functioning humans tell me they’re more than unhappy, reminding him everyone fails classes and gets angry with the world sometimes and that things can change anytime. Feeling sad today doesn’t mean you have to be sad tomorrow or that you have a problem that needs external fixing. Categorizing yourself as something doesn’t help other than to give you an excuse to act a certain way. But this only made him angry at me for calling his problem common, though he countered with the very common argument that everyone else seems to have their lives figured out.
We all obviously don’t, just from reading this blog I’m sure you can see four fine examples of people still figuring it out, and in truth just a few hours before talking to my brother yesterday I was thinking to myself that I miss being joyful, that in the last few months I’ve forgotten how to really laugh.
I’ve been traveling Europe for two months now and while I’ve seen and done a ridiculous amount of wonderful things, I haven’t been particularly happy. Moving from place to place so often I’ve felt much more lonely, insecure, reserved, grumpy, and disappointed than I expected. Finding myself jealous of the giddy and loud school groups who tromp through museums and train stations without any regard for anything except their own immediate joy. There have been many other times I’ve felt grateful and impressed and content and in awe and confident and excited and relieved and proud on this adventure, but rarely have I felt really blissfully happy and while I wouldn’t ever call myself depressed, I would say that I’ve been down, in a rut that I will someday shake.
When I realized this and tried to snap out of my melancholy mood I just couldn’t quite get there, ending up more frustrated than happy, worried that I wouldn’t figure out how to be the person I wanted to be anytime soon. Not that I’m stopping to think about it I can see how easy it would be to let a small scale issue like that get exaggerated into a larger one, how scary it would be to feel like you have no control over your emotions or moods over weeks and months and years. Maybe depression like that would require some extra help and I’ve been doing more harm than good by discouraging the word.
After listening to my brother say he was just sick of feeling this way I started to consider that maybe getting a little outside assistance wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, that even though I know he doesn’t have ‘real depression’ he may have some mild form of it that would pass faster with a little help.
I still think his is mostly situational (he’s a 20 something male with a poor dating record, bad grades, no real career goals and mediocre friends); if even one of these variables improved I think he’d be fine, working through it until more things fall into place. It would be a shame if he got addicted to antidepressants or convinced he had a lasting problem just because of these changeable things.
But maybe I’ve been the wrong one all along and depression isn’t only a biological emotional state that you are powerless to change. Maybe depression isn’t as scary as all that, maybe all these people are just ‘down’ like I’ve been and instead of getting through it in the ways I do, they’re taking other paths. We’re all different, maybe it makes sense that all of our depressions are different too.
Blah, I hate that people get sad and that we have a term for it that somehow makes it okay and terrible all at once.
In the meantime I’m going to keep sucking it up and doing my best to learn and grow and be grateful and joyful. I’m going to take each day as it comes, assuming it to be entirely independent of the day before and in no way indicative of what is to come. And I’m going to do what I can to help my brother because I know the things that make me feel better (Thinking about more than just myself, going outside and interacting with the world) can’t hurt.
A few weeks ago I posted about how I was down in the dull, wintery dumps. Bummed about being away from my husband, frustrated by bratty teens at work, losing interest in things that I used to enjoy, and sleeping away most of my free […]
Guys, I’m in a rut. I may even be depressed. It’s the halfway mark for my student teaching, meaning in 8+ weeks I’ll be back with my hubby (YAY!) in that sunny desert-place we call home. But right now, I’m living with my parents in […]
So I’m from Washington. The state. And no, it is not very sunny there, at least in the Western half of the state (which is the cool one). And yes, it rains a lot. Stephanie Meyer got that part right. But does the gray, gloomy weather really affect my mood? That’s what people with Seasonal Affective Disorder claim to suffer from. I first heard of SAD (see, even the acronym is depressing!) several years ago when some acquaintances of mine decided to move from Seattle to Southern California. One of the reasons they gave was that the wife had SAD, that is, she often got depressed during the winter months. At the time I thought it was beyond silly. Really? You’re blaming the weather for your foul mood? More recently, some expat friends of mine remarked that they planned to retire to Colorado specifically because it gets 300+ days of sunshine a year, and after living in the Middle East for so many years, they just can’t live without plenty of sun.
When they said that, I felt defensive. I mean, sure, sun is great. It’s warm and happy and makes you feel like you’re on vacation, but to say you can’t live in a cloudy state because you need the sun? It struck me as weird, and, frankly, a little SAD. I think the notion of one’s mood being affected by the weather didn’t sit well with me because I like to believe I’m in control of myself. Mind over matter. I’ve never suffered from any kind of real depression, even if I did spend the first 22 years of my life in a state that is rainy and dreary 9 months out of the year. So if it doesn’t affect me, why should it affect you? I was a skeptic, as I often am when it comes to the innumerable syndromes and disorders you can be diagnosed with these days—the alphabet soup of the psychology world. I like to see the world in more simple terms. So if you want to be happy, just…be happier. And don’t blame the clouds for making you sad.
For me, SAD just sounded like an excuse, just like PMS. That’s right, for most of my life I have not been a big believer in PMS (and I don’t believe anything unusual lives in Loch Ness, either. Can you see a pattern here?) I just never seemed to experience it much. I considered myself a very even-keeled, low-maintenance kind of girl. A sudden bitchy outburst was rare for me, and spontaneous tears? Unheard of. I was not overly emotional. Not wildly hormonal. Completely rational, like a man, right? But in the last few months I’ve noticed a disturbing trend…about once a month I have a day when I’m just not happy. I might snap at my students or pick a fight with my husband. I don’t know whether it’s my birth control, getting older, or maybe that I have finally noticed a phenomenon that has been happening all along, but I finally had to admit: I was PMS-ing. Just yesterday I found myself inwardly stewing because I’d done all the dinner dishes by myself, and my husband hadn’t thanked me. But even after he did finally notice and thank me, I still felt depressed. I wracked my brain. Was I over-worked? No, in fact that particular week I had finished my Master’s coursework and paper-grading early. Was I dreading something coming up? No, it was almost the weekend, and spring break and vacation with my parents was just two weeks away. Suddenly, it hit me. There was no reason for me to feel upset in that moment. No reason at all except the fact that I was due to start my period in a couple of days.
It seems PMS, that oft-blamed hallmark of womanhood, is actually a real thing.
It’s kind of like how I didn’t use to believe that alcohol would affect me (and then I went out on my 21st birthday, and…well, that was the end of that theory). I’m skeptical until it happens to me personally. And I dislike excuses. I do believe that I’m ruled by my mind more than my body, and I don’t like it when that mental control is overpowered or written off. PMS specifically has been used as a trump card against women so often that it makes me sick. And the disturbing part is that it’s often women themselves who use it as an excuse to be crazy. When I first heard about SAD, I felt the same way. Why blame something you can’t control instead of looking to yourself to ensure your own happiness? It seemed like a cop-out for the weak. You know, the types that just can’t hack it in an awesome place like Seattle.
But then I got to thinking. Like I said, I’ve never been really depressed, which means I must have been pretty happy my whole life. But the last year of my life, I’ve been…ecstatic. Like totally loving life, enjoying my work, reveling in my marriage, jumping at every chance to explore the world, and appreciating the crap out of all my blessings (except for that one day every month). I have also been living in the middle of a scorching, sunny desert. It got me to thinking: could there be a correlation? Am I happier now than I was a year ago because of my new, sunnier, surroundings? To find out I consulted WebMD, the hypochondriac’s home page. And, I found that SAD must be medically legit, because sure enough, it has a page on WedMD! There it lists the risk factors: living in a place where there is a big variation in the amount of sun from season to season, being between the ages of 15 and 55, and being a woman. Well, frick. That’s a check, check, and check. I must have been SAD before, and now I’m happy, because I live in a land of sunshine.
I know that is an over-simplification. Obviously a lot has changed in my life, not just the weather, but I have to say I do believe the extra sunny days have helped. Like when I am seeing status updates all winter long from my friends back home complaining about wet feet, umbrellas, wind, cold, and cabin fever, while I can kick back with some lemonade and watch my garden grow any day of the week? Yeah, that makes me smile and appreciate what I have. And therefore, it makes me happier.
So I give in. Seasonal Affective Disorder is legit, at least a little. And PMS too. My mind cannot overcome every external factor it has to face, no matter how hard I try. But does that mean when I go back to Seattle I should just curl up in a ball and listen to emo music all day? Do I have an excuse to be mean once a month? No. Because when it comes to the question of mind and matter, you have to fight to find the balance.