I want to preface this by saying that there are two distinct sections. In the first part, I was lost in the pain of depression, and I talk about this, and in the second part, I try to rationalize some things, and try to say a few lines of positivity. This is not about my suffering. Rather, it is about the ending of suffering, which will end, and that’s the message I want to spread.
I think that everyone has low points. These are notable for being depressed, lower than their neutral state, and far lower than their happiest state. What needs to be noted here is that this is not depression. Everyone gets sad, everyone gets miserable, and everyone has terrible points in their life. The difference between depression and sadness, or a moment of depression, is the longevity. Depression is suffering; it is long-term, not short. It’s like a disease, and this disease destroys and harms the mind. Perhaps we don’t realize how lucky we are to have what we have until it is gone. Deprivation is a reminder that can make us glad that we have anything, and I think the most awful feeling comes when one experiences both sides. One side, of depression, and one, of fulfillment, of believing your actions matter.
This contrast acts as a reinforcement depending on whichever side you find yourself on. I think what has harmed me has been feeling like I had a chance, like I had power, I had motivation, a willingness to keep going. This was from having no ability to do things, feeling worthless, finding that my actions were worthless, and had primarily nihilistic thoughts. To have no willingness to do anything, then to have it, and then to lose it again, has destroyed me. I’d like to imagine this is because now I’ve had a taste of what it feels like to be a human being. What it feels like to feel enjoyment, what it feels to like or to care about something, what it feels like to be in a state of action, instead of inaction.
I’m someone who likes to break things down logically. I’ve spent a lot of time psychoanalyzing myself trying to find out why I think and act in certain ways. But what about the feelings of worthlessness, my perception of meaningless, and my inability to fight back? I don’t know. I have some ideas, like my childhood, but that’s over, so surely these feelings wouldn’t persist as well, yes? After feeling these feelings, knowing they are feelings, no longer assigning labels to them, letting them pass, moving on, then perhaps then, I would be free, right? No, it seems not, and it’s terrible.
There’s one thing that exurb1a says in the Hut in the Woods video, about being introverted and having all your ram used up by a program you don’t understand when forced to socially interact. If that’s what being introverted is like, depression is like having a computer virus that’s using all your processing power to mine bitcoin and your mouse and keyboard have exploded, so the owner of the computer can’t uninstall it. So, what would be done in this situation? The computer gets wiped, you get wiped, and if you have depression, you might think about getting wiped, often. If you can’t do anything, or it feels that way, or if the things you do feel worthless, so you stop acting, why stick around? For what conceivable benefit is there to stick around?
I’ve begun to believe that there is some inherent addiction to living. Even if life is suffering, even if all days are worthless, even if death is wished for, but you still stick around for some reason, there is somewhere, deep-down, an urge to live. I don’t know what about life would cause this. It’s usually described as some beauty, some magnificence, and even those who are miserable, those who want to die, can’t ignore this, and so they stick around. Is this the case for me? For others like me? I don’t know. I don’t understand how I could have the ability to do things, to feel like what I was doing mattered, and then, so unbelievably quick, lose it. Lose that power, that urgency, that willingness to go-on.
There was a quote by a book I read recently about nihilism being the result of one being beat down again and again by life, and through learned experience, they decided to confide in the nothingness, or something along those lines. I don’t want to be nihilistic, it’s an excuse to give up, it is an unwillingness to fight. I want to fight, but to fight you need energy, you need the power to fight. Without that, you can’t fight. If you’re fighting someone, and you have no more energy, but they can keep beating you, they will. You will be beat, even when you’re on the ground, and you can’t even beg them to stop, you can’t beg for forgiveness, you don’t even have the power to move your lips. Instead, you are violently disfigured, and the beating only ends when the person beating you decides to stop. This is how depression feels, and this is what feeds nihilistic thoughts.
Sometimes, a person in this condition will have some sort of external tool or means to escaping these thoughts and feelings. It might be a drug, a person, a hope, anything outside of themselves that acts as the means to carry them out of their depression, even if for a little while. This was the case for me, but if that external means has since stopped working. What now? What should I do then? What is there to do? Try something else. To try something, to have that power, that willingness to fight, is some insurmountable task in my mind. Where I was, then, to have that willingness, it took one large spike to try something, to try anything, that led me temporarily to get out of this mental hole.
The black hole in my mind, wherever it is, whatever it stems from, uses everything. It sucks up everything, and leaves me with nothing, so what do I do with nothing? I do nothing. Zero plus zero is zero, zero times zero is zero, and you get the idea. How can you get somewhere without fuel? You need fuel if you want to drive somewhere. This “fuel” for me was “want.” The power of wanting gave me what I needed as fuel. I could want something, and then work towards that, and I know now and I knew then that the want was all fictious. I made it all up in my head, but I was content with that then, and I am content with it now. I felt better like that. It felt good to want, to want more, to want anything. It wasn’t anything in particular, those variables didn’t matter, but it was the fact that I was wanting at all that felt good. I was getting closer to something based on that feeling. Closer to whatever it was I would make up in my head. The sad reality is, that stopped.
At least in the past I would want to minimize my pain, and maybe that’s why it made sense to have nihilistic ideas then. It would help me focus less on the things causing me pain, and more on the fact that I didn’t have to feel anything, and that there was nothing to feel, and I could disassociate from reality, being so focused on anything but this world in order to make it through the day. That want happened to turn into other things, like wanting to play a video game, or watch a video, or do something. Literally anything. The want to do anything. Any action. Any fucking action. When you don’t have the want to do anything, what are you? If you are what you do, and if you do nothing, then what does that make you? Nothing, it makes you nothing. How does it feel to be nothing? Probably as you would expect.
I don’t know if it works that simple all the time. At times, it feels like nothing, so it doesn’t feel all that terrible, but it also doesn’t feel good. It’s this neutral state where it feels like, it doesn’t matter, you genuinely don’t feel like anything matters, but this isn’t a result of negative thoughts. It’s out of negligence for life, a thing you don’t want, but a thing you seemingly cannot get away from. What I want is to feel the urge to feel want, and one would believe that would be enough to get that person to where they need to be, but the world does not always work that way. The world is not so polite as you offer you that, even when you ask politely, or when you don’t ask at all.
It’s like a switch flipped. I’m already aware of how I react to the seasons, so I was aware Winter, or what feels like Winter, was going to impact me negatively. It makes me feel dead inside, I don’t know why, because I find there to be beauty in this cold season, but I can’t avoid it, I can’t just stop it, I can’t just drop it. Maybe this was an additional factor, but I really thought I could avoid it somehow, like this time it surely wouldn’t bring me down, it wouldn’t hold me down to being a person that is dead, but despite this, I ended up on the inside like the outside; dead, cold, and dry. It didn’t come overnight though, it took a little bit of time, and I tried my best to cling onto all I had. I held onto what was working for me until the last moment, but it stopped working, and I stopped working. I dropped all that was my life, my focus. Somehow, I’ve held onto words, writing and reading in little bits and pieces, and that has been something. Something in the nothing that feels like my reality.
Talking about the abyss feels edgy, but it shouldn’t. It doesn’t feel good. It isn’t something to be proud of. It’s torture. It’s like you had the controller to the game you were playing, but then the controller just, exploded in your hands, and now your hands are in poor condition and you don’t even have a controller anymore. What do you do then? What can you do? You wait for your hands to heal, and then you buy another controller. Maybe this really is the case, but how many times will this cycle go on for? In the past, it was like being in a depression all the time, and when it got cold outside, it was like doubling up the depression, which is why I noted, mentally anyway, as the worst months being January and February. It’s not like this is a good thing, it doesn’t matter if it makes me stronger, more mentally resilient to pain, or more receptive to goodness. I’d rather not have any of those things, I’d just be functioning as I was for a few months, that vigor, that interest, and that want, those things I’d have above all else. Unfortunately, they’re out of my grasp. I’m now in a prison, a mental prison, and I can’t play the game anymore, and I’m somehow supposed to be content with this?
It makes me wonder if what was working was just another coping mechanism, that the core of my issues was never resolved, but somehow the cope worked so well that I didn’t notice this silly fact draining away my energy reserves. I know in the past I would cope in order to get away from the realities of my life. I would play a video game because it was easy and I didn’t have to think about the pain and suffering that was ongoing consistently. It’s not like it went away when I was playing a game, but my focus on it was diminished significantly. Obviously, when the game-playing ends, I am returned back into that world I so desperately wanted to escape. Funnily enough, now, I don’t even want to play games. I can, and have played them more often than when things were working out for me, but I feel bad about playing them. I can focus on the pain, on the hurt, and search for the reasons why I feel that way, why I feel so empty, what to do about it, and still come out empty-handed, as if I’m supposed to wait it out, and during that time, I’m supposed to be a being that consumes like everyone else. I don’t want to be just a consumer, I want to create, but it feels like my tools are broken, and I have to wait for the blacksmith to fix them for me.
It hurts to feel like you’re going somewhere, like you have momentum, like things finally make sense, and then to lose that all. It’s not like I was learning fundamental answers to life, it isn’t like I finally learned what I was about, but I was doing something, anything, and I can’t ask more out of myself than that. Things were okay. I was so totally absorbed in those things, I wasn’t in my mind, drifting between all that was, all that could be, what might be, no, I was just acting. I was those things I was acting on, in almost every moment, and that felt amazing. To be stuck in your mind, or for me anyway, is to be stagnate. It is to be unchanging, the same, idle, and I want to be changing, and I want to be, well, not me.
This could be some fundamental issue, honestly. The feeling of wanting to get away from myself, to not be me, to be something or someone else, and this feeling wasn’t present when things were going well. I actually was getting better, or so it felt. Things were good, I had thoughts like, “I love myself.” Never before did I have thoughts like those, never did I previously ever tell myself that I loved myself, but somehow that wasn’t enough? Was it even true? I want to believe every time I thought that or told myself that it was true, it was honest, and I really meant it, and I really felt it. If this is truly the case, then why should I feel upset about my inability to do things? Shouldn’t I love myself even if I’m incapable of doing anything I want to do? Sure, I do love myself even when in this state of idleness, but is it wrong to want to help the one you love?
In my mind, that help is being able to be the things that are ought to be done. If I don’t believe they are to be done, they aren’t done, and so I am nothing. I reiterate this because it feels terrible. I know it isn’t truly nothing. I know what that feels like, and obviously, nothing is not truly nothing, nothing is something, paradoxical, but the feelings associated with “nothing” are clear in my mind. Nothing in the past meant that I was stuck in nihilistic ideas. These inhibited me from believing that things were worth venturing towards or committing to, so I shouldn’t bother. Maybe it acted as a way to save energy, maybe I felt like I had lacked energy to spend on doing things, maybe I was in so much pain I couldn’t fight more than I already was. That is in the past now, and I don’t have those ideas, so it makes me feel so confused and upset to be in the mindset, to feel like, not so dissimilar from then. Why? How did this happen? Why is this happening?
Answering these questions is actually quite difficult. To fall back into the feelings of depression after being uplifted for any amount of time is confusing and agonizing, but I can imagine a few reasons that caused this. These things might be similar for you, and I hope that by sharing some of these things, it could help you understand why you feel the way you do, or perhaps why you don’t feel. I would break it down to two main reasons: depression is a state of control and I am a flawed person. I’ll break these both down so that they make sense, and from there, recognize that something like depression can be strangled, instead of the other way around.
When I state that depression is a state of control, I mean that, in the past, it was used as a tool in order to make me feel like I was in control. Being depressed puts me into a state where I’m not feeling emotion, or if I feel emotion, it is incredibly subtle. It’s a form of suppression, and it works, but why would I want to do this? In the present, I wouldn’t, but in the past, it worked as a mechanism to stop myself from reacting immediately to things or people that otherwise I would have freaked out over. Instead of being emotionally vulnerable, I had a mental castle that I placed myself in, and I was safe within the castle, but the castle is empty, and I couldn’t leave. It was a means of protection, and with this protection, I felt like I could be in control. If I was vulnerable, I’d be totally out of control, and that would mean the possibility of harm, which was learned through experience.
It also worked well with many of the nihilistic ideas that I had then. Thinking everything is worthless combines well with feeling nothing. It makes you believe it is true, and believing something is true, with confidence, gives comfort, and makes you feel like you’re in control. It’s hard to admit that we don’t have control, and so, at least in the past, I believed those things to make myself feel like I had something to hold onto. It makes sense why these systems came about, and I don’t know if things would have been better without them, but they did act as a protective barrier, and they did give me a sense of control. The fact these feelings and ideas were around for years also played a part in why they would impact me to this day.
I am also a flawed person. This can be broken down into three further parts, as I mean to say I require external things to function well, I have limits that cannot be ignored, and depressions that cannot be rationalized. The external things required I don’t want to talk about in detail, but I decided to give myself a break from what has allowed me to do anything. In that time, I was back to being in a state of depression, unable to function, which is when a large majority of this was written. Ideas that person has and I have, are actually the same, but that person didn’t have the control that I do, the ability to act like I do, and so they felt miserable, and they couldn’t focus on the misery to disperse it, so it nagged them until I came back online. It hurts to think that I require things other than myself to function, but I think I would have to seek a professional in order to conclusively find out why this is, but I have still not done so, and until then, I won’t know why, with certainty, why I’m like this. However, what I can acknowledge, is that this is how I am, at least right now, and either I can be upset with it or deal with it and function, despite it feeling wrong at times.
Another aspect of my flawed being is the fact that I get burnt out. For a time, I was pushing, constantly, and I was feeling the limits, and I was ignoring them. Even then, I would be stopped, forced to wait a little while, and then I could get back to acting. What I did not expect to happen was that I would reach a point where I couldn’t do anything anymore, even with my external tools, and I had to experience a cool-down period before I could get back to it. I burnt out by doing many things, trying to force as much information into my head, remember it all, and then being upset when I couldn’t, because I have limits to how much I can learn and understand at once. It hurts to feel like you’re not enough, but I have learned to recognize that if I’m trying with all I have, it’s necessary to accept whatever happens, happens. I can’t be more than what I am, and trying to do so, will lead to pain, and eventually a feeling of incompetence, a feeling of failure, and in my case, I had no other choice but to take a step back before trying again.
By not seeking a professional, I can’t say if I have seasonal depression, but once Winter does come around, I am emotionally feeling much worse than Spring or Summer. I don’t know why this is, there is no rational way to explain it, I just have to deal with it. I’m stuck with a worse mood until things are better again. I’ve tried to rationalize it, by thinking that by internalizing the external, the world on the outside is dead, and by bringing that in, the world on the inside also becomes dead too. Maybe this makes sense, maybe it doesn’t, but I don’t hold that much value in it. I just know that these feelings will end, and I can ignore them, or I can get distracted in things, or I can accept them, but I cannot let them control me.
All three of these variables have impacted me and led me to falling back into a depression, and by recognizing them, I’d like to imagine I can avoid that happening again. Maybe for you too, it can lead you to realizing why you feel the way you do, and then doing something about that, if you have the fight in you. I think we all have a feeling in us that we must continue, that we must fight, and that we can’t give up, otherwise we would, and I feel sorrow for those who did give up. I’ve thought of giving up, and when I feel like I’ve finally distanced myself away from those feelings, but then they come up again, it harms me in ways that I’ve struggled tried to spell out here.
If you’re in the midst of depression, you will fight through it, and you will come out on top. You will strangle depression, and it no longer will have power over you. Seek out the people you love, seek people that love you, do all that you can to free yourself from the feeling of meaninglessness. Even if there isn’t any meaning, if you have to live, don’t you want to live in a way that doesn’t cause you pain? A life that doesn’t make you wish you weren’t around? Depression will try to trick and lie to you, but don’t forget, life is to be enjoyed, and if depression wants to take that away from you, show it who’s boss, and that is you, you are the master.
By describing depression, then talking about how it has impacted me, and how I have fallen into it again, feeling lost, and then trying to make sense out of it all, I hope that it can help those who have been in similar positions. I don’t know if this will genuinely help, it’s hard to say, but at the very least, know that you aren’t alone. Your brain might want to tell you that you’re alone, and maybe you’re the only you to exist, but you’re a lot like other people, and that’s okay, and you should use that to your advantage. You don’t have to fight alone. We have power in numbers, and never forget that. You are not alone.