The thing about depression - A short summary of basically every chronic mental illness

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The thing about depression is, that it’s always there.
So at some point you stop noticing it, you kind of accept it, because this subtle, numb feeling, that represses every other emotion, never leaves, so you stop remembering how it was before, how life might be for others, the “normal”  people.
The metaphor of ‚the fog‘ seems so overused, it’s more like a pair of glasses that don’t match your eyesight. The change of your eyesight seems gradually and at one moment you may feel like something’s wrong, but you don’t really get what and you blame it on the weather or  that you’re tired, you never realise that you might need glasses or that you’re wearing the wrong glasses, until someone points it out and tells you, how it might be with the right pair.

If you suffer from it for years, it starts to feel strangely comforting, it’s a place you can always come back to, where everything stops mattering, because nothing makes sense and being alive becomes pointless – sometimes that’s quite calming.
On the other hand, it stops feeling good, when you realize, you can’t break out of it.
Some people enjoy sadness, because it’s temporary, it’s a short term of time, where you can bawl your eyes out and hide under the blanket and listen to sad music, until you feel better and start being happy again.

Depression is different, you always have to come back to it, because it’s always there and it gets harder to snap out of it as soon as you cross a certain boundary.
It always seems so easy to me, to talk about it, like it’s a choice, like I can control it and like I know exactly where Lili ends and where the illness starts, but the truth is, i have no clue.
Everything I say could be influenced by depression, everyhing that I think is real, might actually not exist - the tricky part is, that you don’t know anymore, what’s normal and what isn’t.
 Am I just sad because he doesn’t love me back, or am I about to jump off a rooftop because the chemicals in my brain aren’t balanced?
Does everyone feel so lonely and does everything hurt so much?
Am I tired and stressed, or is it the depression that makes showering too exhausting and the simple act of eating too much to be asked for?

The thing about depression is, that it’s always there, so you underestimate its power, when it's been gone for a while, in times when it hits you again and you can’t keep fighting.
Rock bottom is such a scary and hopeless place - and the worst thing is, you can never be sure, that that’s really rock bottom.
You don’t have the guarantee, that it can’t get worse. You just know, that it’s now worse than ever and you have to be aware of the fact, that it can easily escalate into death.
Even if you think, that you reached the lowest point and that this is hell on earth, it can still and will become worse -
But it also gets better.

And that’s the last thing about depression, I want to address – it can act like it’s not there anymore.
It hides and you will feel better and you will feel like a fool, because something in your mind almost drowned you again and you will be angry about how you gave it all that power, how you felt it frightening you and sucking you in and you will stand back up and feel strong and with the intention to fight it – only to fall again, a few days later.
Because that’s the thing about depression, it is always there.
But at one point you stop taking it seriously and that’s the biggest mistake.

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