The lows are low, but the highs are home

I remember the other thing I’d noticed about Ottawa now. Air conditioning. In PEI, nobody has air conditioning in their homes. Businesses have it to at least keep things at a decent temperature. Here, everything is COLD. Way, way too much AC. Everywhere. Houses, hotels, everything is air conditioned to death. It’s terrible.

Also, slight correction: the burka is just the kind that completely covers the face. I haven’t seen any of those. Sorry for my failure at Islam.

There hasn’t been much to talk about at my grandparents’ cottage, and I’m not sure the drive to Ottawa will be crazy and exciting either, so this will probably be my only tumblr post until we get settled in sometime on tuesday. We’ll have the keys on monday, but we won’t have any furniture or pillows or anything - so we’re just going to stay in a hotel again that night.

        The only really interesting thing is that I worked on writing a letter last night, by which I mean an actual letter that will be mailed with stamps and everything. I know that must seem ridiculous, so rather than explain that to every single one of you individually, I’ll just tumbl the story and save myself some time.
Two years ago, I had two jobs and a girlfriend during the summer between tenth grade and eleventh. One job was a year-round part time job at a convenience store down the street, which I kept for two years straight. Generally I worked every saturday and sunday, with occasional shifts during the week. The second job was a summer job, working part-time at a summer camp for Canadian Parents for French. I had worked there the year before, and it was lots of fun, so I figured it would be alright this year as well. I had to work 7:30-12:30 every weekday, which meant going to bed early so I wouldn’t be tired. I ended up staying late most of the time to make sure none of the kids mysteriously disappeared, but that’s neither here nor there.

        Thanks to my two jobs, I had plenty of money that summer. I ordered a ton of crap online, namely a bunch of t-shirts and a dozen PS2 games I got on eBay for around $20 each. Having to wait a few weeks to get any of it kinda sucked, but then knowing it could arrive soon was always exciting and I was always really happy when I got stuff in the mail. After getting a particularly large bundle of stuff (I think I got a package of shirts and four games on the same day - they had arrived over the weekend or something and were all delivered on monday) and being super excited about it, my girlfriend at the time said that she wished she could get stuff in the mail, because nothing ever arrives in the mail for her. Simple solution for that: I would write her a letter! I ended up writing a second one afterwards, and that was all well and good because she got something in the mail and everyone won forever at mailboxes.

        Skipping forward about two years (minus a couple of weeks, probably), here I am again writing a letter to her. First of all, I have no reliable internet until we get everything hooked up at the new house, so writing a letter and mailing it is a fine way to keep busy and stay in touch. Second of all, it’s slightly more personal than writing an e-mail, so it’s a good way to let someone know you haven’t forgotten about them. I’m throwing a sheet of stamps in with this first letter to make sure I get letters back, so I can guarantee we’re both still alive for at least ten letters worth of time. I’m not sure how often we’ll write to eachother, really; I wouldn’t want to run through my initial stamp investment before the end of the summer. On the other hand, it’s not 1708 anymore, so it’s not like it will take months for our letters to arrive. Maybe we’ll send them when they’re a specific length, so if life has been terribly exciting it won’t cover much time, but if it’s been horribly boring it might cover a couple of weeks.

        Would you like me to write you a letter!? I can probably do that, but I make no guarantees about sending them regularly. It does take a bit of time to write a proper letter, and if I’m writing seven letters every week, I may run out of things to talk about because I’m spending all of my time writing letters. I can probably send you one or two, though, but only if you send one back! I have to know it got there, and I have to know I didn’t waste my time writing a letter to someone who doesn’t care enough to reciprocate D:

1. My history of depression

I don’t know when I became depressed, but it likely had something to do with taking Ritalin to help with my ADHD. I also forget exactly when I began that, but it was at least before third grade. So I was very young. My parents had done a good job of educating me before I began school, so my early years in school were extremely boring. I already knew everything except cursive writing, except I was shy and afraid of looking like a nerd, so I didn’t speak up in class or show off how smart I was. Yet people still teased me, and over the course of few years their bullying paid off as I began to hate myself and blame myself for everything, rather than blaming others.

        It peaked when I was ten years old, in fourth grade, after my parents decided I was mature enough to stay home by myself. One day, while home alone, I decided that I was tired of ruining everything, and I was going to make the world a better place by removing myself from it. I went downstairs and grabbed the biggest, sharpest, knife that we owned, and brought it upstairs to my bed. Psychologists will tell you a ten year old brain hasn’t developed enough to think in the way I did that day, but apparently there are exceptions. I stared at my reflection in the knife and thought about my life, all the people I knew, and all of the things that bothered me. I realized that most of what I blamed on myself had nothing to do with me, but most importantly, I realized that as miserable as I was, removing my pain and misery from the world would create even more pain and misery to take its place. The pain I would create in the people who cared about me by killing myself would be greater than what I was removing. This is almost universally true. You may or may not care about them, but there will always be people who are glad that you are alive. Remember that.

        I decided I couldn’t kill myself until the day I was completely and totally alone, but I was still depressed. Nothing changed for about four years, until I met a girl who made me feel good for the first time in a long time. To make a long story short, I cared about her, and that was a new experience for me. We became close, eventually dated on and off for a little over two years, and along the way I became happy and realized I wasn’t as terrible as I always thought. It’s been a little over a year and a half since we broke up, but we’re still friends. She helped me overcome my depression, likely for good, and having done it myself I know it’s entirely possible.

———————————————————————

2. The purpose of this post

My goal here is to explain what it’s like to be depressed to people who haven’t been depressed, or who are so used to living with their depression that they’ve never recognized it for what it is. For those who are depressed, or who have been in the past, I also hope to offer some kind of solace.

        Depression is a touchy issue, so I’m going to end up subdividing and classifying things all over the place, but I’m only trying to include everyone and alienate as few people as possible. I don’t want a poor choice of words or absent-minded exclusion to hurt anyone, or disregard their experiences. Depression is an extremely personal thing, and something many people keep to themselves and talk about only with their closest friends. I’ll never be able to cover every single possibility. There are things I simply have no experience with. If you understand what I’ve said, but it doesn’t apply to you or someone you know, then the best way to understand their situation is to ask them.

        I also want to stress that this isn’t an instruction manual or a how-to guide for curing depression. I am not equipped to say “if you are depressed because of x, then do y”. Professional help is very easy to find, and if the situation calls for it, you would be foolish not to seek it out.

———————————————————————

3. What is depression, and why does it happen?

Some people think depression is simply a feeling, a way of feeling sad. That’s true, and most people get that from time to time, and it might last for a few days but eventually it goes away. That sucks, but it’s not really what I’m talking about. I’m more interested in the psychological disorder kind of depression, which sounds scary, but it’s an easy choice of words to distinguish between the two. This is the depression that stays for months, years, even decades. It’s a constant state of that depressed mood, and even when things are going well, it doesn’t magically disappear. You might cheer up for a week or two, but then it slams you back down. This kind of depression sticks around until your life improves drastically, to the point where you’ve solved the initial issue and many more. That’s important, because depression doesn’t just happen; something has to set it off.

        Generally, everyone who becomes depressed has a problem in their life. These are extremely varied, but essentially, depression won’t go away unless that problem is solved. It doesn’t just disappear. If insecurities and poor self-esteem caused the depression, then fixing those will be the only way to get rid of the depression. If abuse or relationship troubles are the issue, then that needs to be taken care of. Basically, you can’t fix the effect while ignoring the cause.

        There is the possibility that depression runs in the family, as it runs in mine through my maternal grandmother, but I don’t believe that means you’re doomed to be depressed forever. My mother told me that it’s just an imbalance of chemicals, and there’s nothing wrong with taking pills to correct that, and to a certain degree that is true. There’s nothing wrong with someone taking anti-depressants. There is everything wrong with the belief that pills and prescriptions will solve everyone’s problems. Again, the most important thing involved in overcoming depression is eliminating the catalyst. Anti-depressants will not help someone in an abusive relationship improve their life. Leaving the abuser and dealing with the emotional scars must have priority. I cannot make this any clearer.

        The other key thing is that depression cannot be cured like a fever or a cold, and it can’t be removed with a good pep talk. You can’t force it out of someone simply by caring about them and supporting them. A personal impetus to be happy and have a better life is the only way to completely overcome it. Maybe that comes from an inspiring event in your life, maybe it comes from an inspiring person who comes along to save the day. I know that simply meeting a wonderful girl did not cure my depression, because I was still depressed for a time when we were together. It was through the gradual process of deciding I wanted to be happy and accept myself that I got through it, and I couldn’t have done it without her. I also know that it didn’t depend entirely on her, because it hasn’t come back now that things have changed between us. Of course, I get sad and “depressed” every once in a while, and that’s a legacy of my years of depression that will never stop completely. Now, however, I know how to cope, and I know that it will pass. For a day or two I might isolate myself and alienate a few friends, but inevitably I cheer myself up and life goes on.

        The reason I’m addressing the idea of treating depression like a normal  is twofold: first, if you are depressed, you must know how to deal with it. It’s hard, and I would honestly put anyone who overcomes their depression far above the average in terms of emotional strength, but you will have to want it and work for it to get there. Second, if you know someone who is depressed, you have to choose between helping them cope and helping them get better. I’ve learned first hand that you can’t compliment someone so much that they gain self-esteem, nor can you cheer them up to the point where their depression goes away. A depressed person in a good mood is still depressed, and they will be depressed when you aren’t there to cheer them up. You have to support anything they do to contribute towards getting better and give them as much solid advice as you can to solve the problems in their life. It comes to a point where you must accept that no amount of love and care will lead someone to change their life, and if you can’t convince them by yourself, you have to find some other strategy to work with. I can’t tell you what you will have to do, but it falls to your best judgment to decide how to proceed.

———————————————————————

4. Why is depression such a problem?

The main problem with recognizing depression is that it’s not like “woe is me, I am so depressed and miserable and sad!” It’s not as direct as that, and you don’t really tell yourself that you’re depressed. If it’s something that comes and goes, maybe you recognize it, but if it’s something you’ve had persistently, it’s not often that our brains identify it for what it is. You just don’t feel things properly, but if you’re used to it, you’ll never know the difference. Your joy is muted, your excitement for things you would otherwise care about disappears, and life becomes a chore as all pleasure seems to disappear. It becomes hard to care about anything positive, and very easy to care too much about everything negative. The worst part is that you don’t care that things aren’t right in your life, and it’s extremely hard to want to change and to work steadily towards helping yourself. With most types of depression, people feel as though THEY are the problem in their life, so it makes it even harder to care about helping themselves.

        To be clear, this is not fun. There’s no pleasure involved in being depressed. It doesn’t make you feel any better that people who want to help you are frustrated by the fact that you won’t help yourself. I don’t really need to list the symptoms of depression, but they all work together to create a constant mental, physical, and emotional fatigue. Overcoming all of that is one of the most emotionally strenuous tasks many people will ever undertake.

        The difficulties people face such as the loss of family and loved ones, dealing with illness, and other emotionally painful things, require a different kind of strength to surpass. Other people can help you deal with grief, but no one can give you the strength to feel genuine happiness again. After you’ve survived depression, there’s not much that can bring you down as low as you once were. After you learn to cope with minor setbacks, and figure out the things that help you preemptively stop bouts of depression - sleeping well, exercising, listening to upbeat music, writing, whatever works for you really - you’re basically set. Even when things go bad, it’s business as usual rather than the end of the world.

        Not only do people who are already depressed have a hard time wanting to work towards helping themselves, but they don’t usually feel like doing a whole lot of other things either. By procrastinating and spending time thinking about everything that’s wrong with your life, things inevitably pile up or don’t get done and make everything worse. It’s a bad cycle to get caught in. Just like overcoming depression, overcoming this cycle means not only taking care of all the work you didn’t do, but going ahead and doing the work you’re supposed to be doing right now so you don’t get stuck in it again. It’s a big productivity waster, and with extreme depression it’s a struggle to get anything done at all. You simply don’t care.

———————————————————————

5. What’s it like to be depressed?

You may know the symptoms in theory, but that really doesn’t tell you anything about what it’s like to be depressed. You’ll hardly ever feel happy and you won’t enjoy much, you’ll sleep too little (or too much), you won’t eat enough (or you’ll each too much), you might have inexplicable headaches and you’ll spend most of your time tired. Sure, none of those things sound pleasant, but the broad symptoms like that are the least of your worries. Most of those symptoms are physical, and the only emotional ones (no joy or pleasure) doesn’t sound very intimidating. Basically, reading that doesn’t give you any idea of the mental and emotional effect it has when it becomes a “normal” part of your life.

        When I was in junior high, one of the ways I visualized my depression was a filter separating me from everything and everyone else. When life was going well, it was a light grey filter. When the depression got worse, it was a darker grey. The filter coloured my perception of everything in life, from my interactions with others to my thoughts and emotions. A dark grey filter led to pessimism and paranoia, and I would assume the worst of everyone. I felt emotionless, like a robot or a psychopath. Things I used to love became soulless routines, and things I should have enjoyed meant nothing to me.

        Being depressed was the emotional equivalent of needing glasses to see or a hearing aid to hear. Things that should be there are nowhere to be found, and it’s very difficult to function normally with the kind of dampening you get from not seeing, hearing, or feeling everything you should. If you continue the charade and act like nothing is wrong, you’ll only aggravate the symptoms and make the problem worse. Lying and acting adds further stress to your life as you try to convince others that nothing is wrong.

        Imagine, then, looking out at a beautiful sunset. It’s amazing, it’s beautiful, and to simply experience it once would be to live a better life. Except when you look out, the sun is colourless and drained of any potential beauty. Birds are chirping and the radio in your car is playing your favourite song, but these sounds are far away and distorted as if your head were submerged in a foot of water. That’s a bleak version of an incredibly beautiful moment, which is sad on its own, but it doesn’t stop there. Apply that same dampening effect to daily tasks, which are far less beautiful than a gorgeous sunset, and imagine living with that every single day. Nobody really enjoys those things, so imagine being depressed and having to force yourself through them. Sounds… depressing, doesn’t it?

I didn’t feel like writing at all yesterday afternoon, so I played Lost Planet instead. After watching Letters to Juliet and Eclipse last night, both of which are love stories, I feel like writing! I’ll discuss them briefly here, so that they don’t get in the way of the post I’m going to write about being depressed. If you see this before I finish writing it and would like to proof-read/review/discuss/whatever it with me, I have xfire, MSN, and AIM listed at the bottom of my tumblr. If you don’t use any of those, well, tumbl your alternative or e-mail either the hotmail or AOL account.

        So, Letters to Juliet. Startling similarities, such as the main character being a perfectionist about her writing and dealing with a fiancé who eventually chooses his work over her. Notable only for a conversation where the girl admits to being a perfectionist about her writing, and her future-fiancé-replacement accuses her of simply being afraid to be imperfect. It’s not far from the truth, and it’s a noble sentiment (your writing is great, stop worrying about it), but I would instead say that perfectionism comes from insecurity rather than fear. Fear would mean fear of failure, fear of being imperfect or not good enough. You would look at what you’ve accomplished and think “I hope this is good, I hope people like it, I worked so hard on this so it had better do well.”

        Unfortunately, perfectionists don’t really think about that. Rather, they tend to look at what they’ve accomplished and think “this is nothing, this is terrible, I worked so hard on this and it was a complete waste of time.” It’s not so much a fear of anything as it is not believing in yourself. You NEED those perfect marks/job/whatever you happen to be working for, but you don’t think you’re good enough, and ultimately time runs out or you get frustrated and you take something you aren’t personally happy with and hand it in anyway. Maybe it goes well, maybe it doesn’t. Even worse, when it’s something without a deadline, is when it goes unfinished because you simply don’t believe the finished product will be any good. I’ve got so many half-formed ideas for writing floating around, it’s more about deciding which to write about than actually writing. I wouldn’t be writing a number of posts I’m going to make if I wasn’t relaxing and avoiding “real life” at all costs.

        One huge caveat: This is simply the kind of perfectionism I see often in myself and others in my academic classes. The people who take Advanced English and every science course available. I accept the existence of positive perfectionism, in the sense of someone who simply does their best all of the time and makes sure everything is perfect. There’s also neurotic forms of perfectionism, where there’s an obsessive compulsion towards working far too hard and never thinking anything is done. I’m simply writing based on personal experience, and likely for everyone person who feels perfectionism differently there will be several who nod and recognize the feelings I’ve described.

———————————————————————–

        Now, Eclispe is a complicated monster simply because it has a complicated place in an already complicated history of my complicated relationship. Essentially, it was chock full of similarities to myself and others, both in terms of character and situations. It’s not as clear cut as I’m x character and they’re y character, though, as there are bits of each of us in all of them. At any rate, these similarities were present situations rather than old-ish history when my girlfriend at the time was reading the books, and this created all sorts of depressing experiences. It was just a bad coincidence that the books came to her attention at the absolute worst time possible. Though I suppose reading them beforehand, or afterwards, would have been just as bad… It was just entirely unfortunate.

        Oh, and as far as the characters in Eclipse go… I feel no empathy towards the horrifically beautiful things presented on that screen. They’ve taken humans and air brushed and sparkled them to nearly disgusting levels. Maybe that’s how some people imagined the characters in the books (I doubt it?) but it certainly doesn’t evoke anything in me.

———————————————————————–

        Anyway, I’m going to go work on that post about being depressed. It probably won’t be finished tonight, so you have plenty of time to contact me and offer your editing services or whatever help you feel you can give. Oh, and I suppose I should be clear, it’s based on being depressed in the past. It’s not meant to be my life’s story, either, but instead some exposition on something people either understand too little or understand far too well. For those who do not understand it, I’ll try to explain.

        I can’t help but quote As I Am by Dream Theater here, because it’s basically what I would have said anyway, only I can attribute it to someone else and sound snazzy. Ho ho ho.

To those who understand, I extend my hand

Early morning: My teeth were stolen from under my nose last night, as well as my watch. I returned, frantically, to the house I found yesterday, and found them only after half an hour spent searching. Thankfully, it was not compromised before I left. The watch wasn’t worth nearly as much. Once that was done, I was on the road again, all by my lonesome. I thought as I walked, to help pass the time. I thought that maybe some people are just destined to be alone, because of the truths they think no one will believe… when, in fact, we all have similar things to hide. It’s fairly common to open up to someone, only to find they’ve had a similar experience or can relate for one reason or another. I walked for a few hours, and stopped in a diner around noon.

        Noon: As I ate my lunch, an old man came to sit with me. I had never met this man before in my life, yet instantly I felt as though I should trust him. He watched me silently for nearly twenty minutes as I ate, looking into my eyes and seeming to read deep into my soul. When I finished, he reached out and took hold of my wrist. He put his index and middle fingers there, as though feeling for a pulse. Then he nodded, folding his hands on his lap.

        “Young man,” he said, “I don’t pretend to know what you’ve been through. I don’t know who, or what, you’ve lost in your incredibly short life. Nor do I know the extent of your pain. Nor do I have some mystical reason for such unjust things happening to perfectly good people. The one thing I do know is that your heart yet beats. It is wounded, but strong. You’ll live.”

        He smiled as if this was all I needed to hear, and nothing else he could say would be of any further use to me. Then he left the diner entirely, and when I followed him to watch him leave, he was already gone. I returned inside and paid for my meal before returning to the lonely road.

        Late evening: A young man, clearly wealthy and with fabulous hair, drove me the rest of the way to my destination. We spoke about life, and I told him about my encounter with the old man. He told me he’d use that line for sure when trying to get a girl on rebound. I nodded absently and spent the rest of the long drive watching the grass fly by.

        After arriving at my destination, I watched my contact conduct a symphony of destruction. It was equal parts the most beautiful and terrifying thing I’ve ever seen. The sounds and sights were glorious, and the screams of fear and pain seemed to only amplify the beauty of the song. Yet as he played, tears streamed down his cheeks. I wanted to touch his shoulder, to comfort him, but I was afraid I would throw off the music. What he was doing would wound his soul, and no one can talk that hurt away. Yet it was necessary. Entirely necessary. For the greater good, fitting sacrifices must be made. A sheep is born a sheep because it is not meant to be a wolf, and like the wolf, it must play its parts in the food chain.

        Finally, the symphony ended. Our work was finished for the night. Good. The future won’t plan itself, after all.

        (italics courtesy of Mortal Coils by Eric Nylund, a book I would totally recommend as a fun read)