Understanding depression

Fear is a funny thing, and it can drive us to do weird and irrational stuff.

When my grandfather died in July 2012, it left me terrified of dying by the same fate: brain cancer that led to some dementia as he spent his last year or so with us. I spent the next five months eschewing meat, confident that animal products made him sick. I still remember my first manic attack from the lack of food, but never thought twice about it. Then I switched to a low-carb meat-based diet, became “passionate” about where my food was coming from and started reading into anthropology and self-help. If there was something that could make my life better, healthier and disease-free, I welcomed it right in. the more information, the merrier, right?

Then summer of 2014 happened. Upon returning from one of the greatest trips of my life, I took the motto “You aren’t your body” to a stupid level, casually drinking most weekdays and bingeing on the weekends. Add in going to sleep at midnight before needing to wake up at 4:30 a.m. for work and having an argument with a friend that left me in a panic, I had transformed from a mostly happy kid with minor insecurities to an adult with depression, a severe mental illness.

Even if some of us cannot comprehend the complexities of depression, we must still remember what it was like to be children. Whenever we had the chance to go somewhere new, our bellies were exploding with anticipation. We had that feeling — that feeling inside that something cool or amazing or awe-inspiring was about to happen. The joy of children is palpable. It is a spiritual thing to keep that throughout life, for it keeps our heads above water. When that feeling wanes, though, the nebulous forces of depression can very easily fill up that space and engulf your consciousness. That was exactly what happened to me.

All of that light and color and energy contained within the smile of a child was gone. Constantly sucked and pulled by this overwhelming sense of dread. Imagine a hangover, but unlike a hangover — which you are confident will pass with more food or sleep — the black hole that is depression takes that hope away. The darkest parts of the imagination take over, and a constant screening of the darkest parts of your life play over and over again. Minor fear becomes life-threatening terror, as waves of cortisol and adrenaline pump through your body over and over again. There is nothing that saves you, except waiting it out, hoping that something will come along and end this, even death.

The one medicine I have tried made me feel like a zombie, and having been a very intelligent person in high school, this was disheartening. So I persuaded myself to stop taking it. It was for schizophrenics and psychotics anyway, I thought. The things I used to do and the person who I used to be seemed like a different life and person. Memory problems became annoying and frequent. Talking to people used to be fun; then it became arduous.

But the fun is returning since I accepted my depression and sought help. I was one of the fortunate ones though. Others engulfed in the tempest of depression that pulls them out to sea never return to shore. The saddest part is that there is always people around who could have easily extended a hand if they knew.

As Andrew Solomon said in one of my favorite TED talks, “The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality, and it was vitality that seemed to seep away from me in that moment.” I have never heard words that speak truer to me after experiencing this for myself, and it’s not something I would wish on my worst enemy, for one can still seem happy to others but lack a sense of life. Many think of the mentally ill as attention seekers, or at least used to, but I beg any readers to reconsider this position, as I used to hold it. I was

completely wrong.

As college-age adults, mental illness is most prevalent among us. It is time for those of us who are well or recovered to not let our comfortable lives on solid ground blind us from looking out to see our friends who are caught in the riptides.