I have clinical depression. There. That is the hardest part of this article for me to write and it is over in four simple words. Four words which carry so much meaning and, at the same time, mean nothing at all. I am the same as I ever was, but these four words are the knife which sever me from the high-functioning individual I always supposed myself to be. High-functioning was a title I was proud of. It meant efficiency, capability, strength. All of the things which added up to what I used to qualify as success and the validation of my own existence.
Well, it turns out that I was wrong. Excruciatingly wrong.
“Functioning” is something only machines are designed to achieve and what it really implies is that fatigue, sensitivity, or even deep rest should induce inescapable feelings of guilt. That was one of the first things my counsellor told me: guilt is depression’s friend. Functioning is not equivalent to living. If you have seen Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, where the protagonist Willy commits suicide for the life insurance, what I am getting at is something along those lines.
When I am numbed by my depression, I am no longer functioning to the standard that I had mentally set for myself. And I believed that it was this which would finally crush my sense of worth. This which would have the power to melt my protective outer shell to reveal a polluted core underneath.
Instead, it revealed an overwhelming mark of interrogation. Where I was terrified of finding someone broken, I found someone that I barely knew at all. This is why I would define depression as a form of grief. You grieve both for what you have lost, and for what you have found in its place. For many, it is only antidepressants and therapy which can help with the shock. I cannot tell you what depression is defined as for everyone. Only my own experience.
Ironically, this article is not intended to be “depressing”. By breaking down who you were before, you can begin the journey from functioning to living. The full experience of living is something that I crave like a drug. I suspect that it is the only addiction which is good for you. It is the thing which can satiate the void depression creates. I want to experience the world in full technicolour like a beautiful motion picture. My depression can shake hands with life and I will emerge like a butterfly from the cocoon. I truly believe that this is possible.
If you are struggling with mental health difficulties, I would urge you passionately to permit yourself the following:
- Reach out to a professional who can guide you.
- Allow for a period of deep rest and recuperation.
- Release the guilt you may feel over not “functioning”.
- Focus on things that spark joy no matter how seemingly trivial.
- Depression can fade and it can linger, but it does not made you lesser.