Hi folks. Of late I've seen a lot of talk on Facebook and Twitter about depression. Now a lot of people, even gamers, suffer from depression. And for those that don't know, depression works at different levels. For some, depression is an annoyance that crops up for them from time to time, but they deal with it. On the other hand it just gets worse from there for people who have depression.
So what would I know about it?
If it wasn't apparent, I have lived with severe depression for much of my life. I've given things a lot of thought, and decided that I would share my story and thoughts with folks.
To start, I was diagnosed with this when I was young. Like a lot of people, I was bullied when I was a kid. It started when I was in grade school, 3rd grade. This occured in Lewiston ID, and is one of the main reasons I hate the town. For me there was no break from it. Each day of school there was always something. And even when I wasn't in school during the summer, it still occurred from time to time.
Junior high saw things get worse. As schools funneled students to a single junior high school, the bullies also increased in a similar manner. It was at this stage that I would be physically assaulted on 3 occasions while in school. The first time was while I tried to go down a flight of stairs, a rather large teen, grabbed me by the throat and threw me down a flight of stairs. I lost consciousness, and woke up long enough to see a couple of girls walk by and do nothing to help.
The next time was in science class. Same guy sat behind me, and punched me in the back of the head, knocking me out. The last time I was assaulted just involved someone sitting behind me and kicking my chair along with flicking me behind the ear. This little thing however would result in me finally snapping and kicking my desk across the class room, putting my fist through a plate glass safety window before marching to the office.
I remember a teacher coming out and telling me to go to the office. I responded "where do you think I'm going!"
Now amidst these time were bouts where I was isolated, pushed into lockers, made fun of, and so forth. And as I was in boy scouts, I also dealt with a few bullies in the troop as well, but as I was constantly in a leadership position, and there were adults around, they had to curtail how bad they were. Though, from what my dad told me, their fathers (who were assistant leaders, my dad was the scout master) were just as bad as their sons.
Something people don't realize about being the victim of bullies, is that you can become what you hate. For me, I did the deplorable thing of picking on two other people, whom at the time I thought deserved to be harassed more than I was. Now unlike those who picked on me, I did realize my colossal screw up. I tried to apologize to both of them. One of them accepted, while the other didn't.
My realization came when I finally found out that the people who I thought were my friends in school were in fact nothing more than toxic bullies who talked about me and used me as their own form of entertainment. So when I put a stop to that, their true colors came out. It would be at about this time that I had made new friends from scouts, with these two specific friends being like brothers to me. These guys found out what was happening to me, and got the word out that I was to be left alone. But by this time I was on my way to high school, and they were moving to their junior year of high school.
Throughout the 6 years of my life that I lost, wondering who I could trust, who was really a friend, and just dealing with all of the bullshit that comes with being a kid/teen, I lived with depression. I would come home and cry. I often dwelled upon what they told me, and thought it was true. I thought about killing myself on more than one occasion. I even thought about hurting my tormentors.
Depression takes your mind to places it shouldn't go. Over the years, I've come to look at depression as like being really drunk. Things that you would normally not think of doing, (aside from killing yourself or others), suddenly become more palatable to you as you look for ways to assuage your feelings. You might over indulge in food, or shopping, or even make other decisions that are really bad for you, but because your thought process is inhibited those decisions look like good ideas.
Normally, people who have severe depression take medication to help keep this at bay. Those that don't take medication, often don't deal with their depression well, but this isn't always the case for everyone. For me, I've been fortunate that I'm not only immensely creative, but I'm an analytical thinker. What this means for me is that when I get an idiot thought in my head, like hurting myself, I tend to play out the whole scenario in my head.
This breaks down to how much something would hurt, and progress to how much my loss would hurt others around me. What would it do to them? Would it create a downward spiral of loss, or self destruction? When my depression hits this level of low, it's my analytical thinking that helps save me from myself...though it takes longer for it to break me out of my depression.
I'm 38 now, and severe depression is still a part of my life. It resurges in times of stress (like when I was working on my last math class), or during times like the day my dad passed away, or his birthday. I regulate myself in a few ways. First off I remind myself, once my mind clears, that depression is nothing more than a chemical imbalance and nothing I was thinking is right.
Another thing I do is find something else to do that allows me to refocus and give me a chance break out of my funk.
Video games have long been that point of stress relief. Action games, FPS, RPGs, whatever I need to work though a problem is there to take my mind off things. This isn't always an available resource for me though. If I'm at work, or out and about, I have to just push through it. In these instances I hold onto the fact that I ultimately have people who depend on me, and loosing me isn't an option for them.
I know that my methods, and my way of handling my depression isn't something everyone can do. What I was hoping to do with this was to outline my own battle with depression, and hope that others may read this and be able to come up with their own means of regulating the pain they go through.
What advice can I give all of you who suffer from depression?
Everyone is looking for an answer to this, and everyone has an opinion on the matter. First, don't be afraid of medication. If your thinking of hurting yourself, or others then you may want to seriously speak with a psychologist about getting some medicine to take care of yourself. I know it's expensive, but its better than acting out on darker urges that you would really not want to.
The next one point I would suggest is always have a means of pulling yourself out. Depression is like a black hole. It sucks you in and can swallow you up forever unless you put full power to the engines, and pull yourself out of its grasp! Laughter is also good for countering depression. Now I know that it can be tough to break your mind away from the crap thats dragging you down to find something funny, but do make an effort of it. It's something that has worked for me, and I'm sure it's worked for others.
Really there is no simple solution. There are only ways we learn to live with our depression. I urge anyone who is reading this, who suffers from depression, to find ways to regulate it. It's not your fault that that depression just comes along and kicks your legs out from under you. Even if you may think people will get on without you, know that it's not true. And finally, I know that we beat ourselves up over things that may happen in our lives, and that because we may not have been there, or we were late and that if only we hadn't been there for those things we could have made a difference.
February 12th, 2009, at 12:45pm I lost my dad. The day before I had gotten a call that he was in the hospital and had a diabetic seizure. When I spoke with everyone at the time, I was told he was awake and doing ok. The next day, when I decided to drive out to where he was, I found out that his situation was worse than it had been initially. He'd had another seizure and was now on life support. It took me two hours to get to the hospital. I arrived just in time to spend a minute with my dad in a catatonic state, only being kept alive by a machine.
I've kicked myself for years, beaten myself up, because I chose to wait for the next day. If I had only left as soon as I had heard, maybe things would have gone different. Maybe my dad would still be around and my kids would have a grandfather. Instead they only know about him from what we've told them.
Sometimes when I see a picture of him, I keep saying I'm sorry that I was late, that I arrived only to watch him die.
The thing is, it's not my fault. When I'm rational, I know this. But when the depression hits...well obviously I don't think rationally. And you should try to remember this for yourself as well. Sometimes you just can't fight what will inevitably happen. And you can't blame yourself for what you did/didn't do, or could have done/not done.
One last thing that I stress. Don't do what I often do, and that's bottle up your emotions. My past of being bullied caused me to instinctively bottle up and contain my emotions. Now the upside is that I can, after a time, force down my emotions. The other side of the coin in that is that its not healthy to do that. Find someone to talk to, or at least someone who will let you lean on their shoulder and let out your emotions. Now I don't mean someone who will let your throw a punch, I mean to get a good cry out. I know that sometimes you need to just hit something, but that's not what I'm talking about here. It's not always easy to let go and let people into your life's problems, but it's often a good idea to try to.
And if you need to hit something, well look online for a gym that offers some punching bags, sign up and go beat the stuffing out of them.
That's all I got on this. I hope that some of you may find my views helpful. I'm not expecting folks to be inspired, or to come to some revelations. My hope is that maybe someone, if at least one person, will find my story and how I handle things helpful.
Take care everyone, I've still got a conversion I'm working on.
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