A Story about Depression

One of my favorite bloggers has inspired this post. Today, she posted about everyone's favorite topic- depression.

Now, let me be clear- there is a huge cavern of difference between "feeling sad" and depression. Feeling sad is motivated by some occurrence, and anyone can suffer from it. People can suffer from profound sadness over any number of things. You can be sad because a relative died, and you can be sad because a hurricane devastated a group of people.

Depression is different.

Now, I cannot begin to vouch for anyone else's feelings, but I feel I'm pretty good at telling the difference between when I'm feeling sad and when I am suffering from genuine depression.

I was sad when my grandfather died last spring. I was depressed while living in Portland.

And I don't need to go into the minutiae of what my experience was like while being depressed, except that it was all-encompassing and overwhelming. I felt like I could not get out of bed, and what was worse, that no one cared whether I got out of bed or not.

And it builds on itself. I stopped going to class, I stopped doing homework, I made excuses for not socializing with my friends. I put off life itself because it was simply too much for me. I blew off my life, and shit built up until I felt like there was no way I could wade back into the thick of it. There were too many essays, too much homework, too great of a burden.

Everything just turned into one ugly, painful spiral, and I hated myself for it. I didn't understand how other people managed it so easily, when getting out of bed was an accomplishment for me. I cried in the shower, I cried myself to sleep, I cried walking back to my dorm after the few classes I did manage to attend.

I'm not going to try to illustrate that kind of self-loathing that I (and my guess is others) felt while in this great little shit-hole, the kind where you look in the mirror and hate everything you see, and everything you represent. If you've felt it, you know what I mean. If you haven't, you're lucky, and you're not about to gain any understanding from a silly little blog like mine.

Depression is like addiction- no one can tell you you've got a problem. No one can tell you to get better. You have to be willing to get help, and to help yourself. And that's how it ended- I helped myself. I started by forcing myself out of bed, forcing myself to work on homework, study for tests, go buy groceries. I put myself in that hole, and I dug myself back out of it. On a scale of the most painful experiences I have had, this was by far the worst, but I survived. In fact, I more than survived- I got myself out of Portland, transferred to a school I love, found a degree I love, and moved as far away from that place, mentally, as I could. I'm not making light of it; getting through that year was an enormous show of will power.

And that is not how I would advocate doing it. Regardless of my personal thoughts towards psychology, nothing is more useful when you're in a hole than a good therapist. I know that having a therapist is sometimes regarded as a personal failing, but get over it. If you need help, you need help. In my case, I forced myself back onto a track that worked for me, but that's not the way to do it for other people. Just as every individual's problems are unique, the solutions also vary.

The aforementioned blogger's turning point came when she realized she had no more effort left to give to being depressed. My own turning point came when, after talking about how awful living in Portland was making me feel with a friend, he replied that I didn't have to live there. He told me there was no reason for me to stay. A shocker, I know, but in my private spiral, it never occurred to me that I could leave.

So, I did leave. I got better. And I realized that I'd learned more about myself in that one year of hell than I had over the last 18 years. I found out that I don't need validation from other people, so long as what I'm doing is important to me. I found out that I will always have the ability to change something that's got me doubting myself. Most importantly, I found out that I'm a hell of a lot tougher, and more capable, than I ever thought I was. While I was stuck in that dark nonsense, I couldn't see my life possibly getting better. Now, on the other side of it all, I can see that nothing bad ever stays bad, but it will only change if it is forced to change. Even though that was possibly the worst year of my life, I would never go back and change any part of it.

I am me because of it.

Thanks for the Concern, Rick, but No.

I watch CNN frequently- not so much for the news, but for the entertainment factor. If I want news, I go somewhere that hires real journalists, like Reuters or the BBC.

On CNN, Wolf Blitzer, that king of the clueless, asked Rick Santorum (hehe, santorum) about abortion. Because, you know, white men still haven't come to a consensus on whether or not women should be in charge of their own bodies.

Anyway, dear Mr. Ricky claims that abortion is wrong because a fetus is a person. Fetuses can feel pain, after all. Women who get pregnant have to face the consequences of their actions.

Thanks for that, man. I'm glad that because you have a penis, you know better than I do. In fact, will you do my taxes for me, too? My feeble lady-mind just can't get that far. While we're at it, could you do my homework? I'm just worried that my overly-emotional brain will explode.

Let's go through some of those common arguments, starting with the one that some states want to incorporate into law.

"Fetuses feel pain." Well, yes. Sure. I suppose that, on a quantifiable level, it sends the same chemical signals that science has come to associate with pain. You know what else does that? Plants. Studies have shown that plants feel pain. Does that mean I never have to eat Brussels sprouts, either? You know, since we're never going to ever do anything that causes anything to feel "pain." While we're at it, let's add meat and fish to that list, since those things all feel pain, too. Oh, and don't forget- parasites can probably feel pain, too. So don't you dare try to kill those lice on your kid's head. They're living things, too. They feel.

"A fetus is a person." No, it's a group of cells. It relies on the mother in order to live. You what else exhibits that behavior? Tumors. A fetus isn't a person till it comes out of the womb (And not the stomach, Rick. Jesus fucking Christ.). Once it's out, it's a baby. Until it comes out, it's a fetus. Sort of like the whole lava-magma thing.

"Women need to face the consequences of their actions." Oh, that's creative. It's her womb, therefore, her problem. Furthermore, I love that we're considering children to be "consequences." I'm sure that hasn't created any sociopaths.

Let's talk about facing the consequences of one's actions. I assume that, since we're considering pregnancy to be a consequence, and are therefore condemning abortion, we're going to apply this to every kind of consequence for one's actions. This means, obviously, that doctors are now forbidden from setting broken limbs- falling on your arm while skiing was your choice, and could have been prevented, but you went with it anyway. Now you've got to either heal on your own, or die of blood poisoning. Also to be considered "consequences" are communicable diseases, natural disasters, and accidents of all kinds. After all, you chose to get hit by a car. It's not our problem.

Hopefully, this all sounds insane, and not your idea of a utopia. If it does, get away from me. But if you see how ridiculous any of these are, then you ought to see how absurd the arguments against abortion.

I love kids. I want kids of my own, someday. However, if I discovered that I was pregnant- for any reason- and I wasn't in a place where I could deal with being pregnant or raising a child, I would want the option to be there. It is unfair to everyone involved when a woman has a child she can neither raise nor emotionally support. I believe that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare, which means the attention needs to shift off of abortion itself and onto the way we raise kids to be sexually-aware adults. I know we're all secretly twelve and talking about sex is icky, but let's be honest- kids do it with or without your guidance. So suck it up, stop trying to force laws on my goddamned uterus, and do the adult thing. Condoms and birth control are a hell of a lot cheaper than children.

Then again, maybe Rick Santorum is willing to raise all those "consequences."