Depression oftentimes manifests in the body, it's not all "in your mind". What I mean by this is that people suffering from depression oftentimes have physical symptoms of depression aside from their mental symptoms. Today, I want to attempt to explain some of these physical symptoms using an analogy. The hope is that through this, outsiders may be able to understand those who suffer from depression a little bit better. And hopefully through this understanding we'll be able to better advocate for those with depression.
(Part one: a physical sensation) Imagine, You've always been used to how your body feels. You've been in your body ever since you were born, so you have a good understanding of it. You're aware of how much your arm weighs. When you lift up your arm, you know what to expect. Just as you move your arms every day, they feel, well... like arms. Not too heavy, not too light, just right. Normal. When you lift each leg to create the movement that is walking, they feel quite light, easy to move, just as they do every day. You lift up your head and are aware of how much it weighs, your head isn't weightless, you know it has weight. But since your head has been attached to your body all your life and has maintained the same relative weight for all of your life, you don't even notice it. The same way we can all technically see our nose but our eyes have grown so accustomed to it that they ignore the sight of your nose and your field of vision looks past it. For the most part, you're used to your body. It's yours and you move it and everything feels normal. You're used to the normality of your body, you move it every day with ease. You use it to get around and pick up things. You use it to express yourself, to show love, to live your life. Nothing is unusual, it's your body, the same one you've had since you were born, and you use it as so. Providing that you are a healthy individual, you can move your body with ease and don't even think twice from movement to movement. It's instinctual. Now imagine, you wake up one day, you lie there in bed, your eyes just opened, and you've realized that it's morning and now time to get up. First, you try to position your arm to use as leverage in order to get up and out of bed, but as you attempt to move your arm, you suddenly realize that it weighs a thousand pounds. Confused and shocked, your arm suddenly feels like a steel beam. Momentarily paralyzed by the realization that your arm now weighs a thousand pounds, your brain rushes to conjure up some sort of alternative to get out of bed, and most importantly to make sure that the rest of your body maintains its regular functions. Your brain conjures up a plan B; you now instead try to move your legs. You set the intention to move your legs and attempt to do so, but to your shock and horror, your legs also weight a thousand pounds each. Now, paralyzed in bed, shocked, and confused, you've realized that your body is too heavy. You're trying to move but it's just too difficult. Suddenly, the body that you've known and used with ease your whole life weighs a thousand pounds. A thousand pounds pushing-and pushing-and pushing down on you, weighing down on you, and you're paralyzed upon your bed. Morning has passed, you're still paralyzed, now your mind is also growing tired as well. All the energy that your body processes at this newfound realization that it weighs a thousand pounds, has mentally and physically exhausted you. The energy that it takes to maintain your body afloat upon the bed, to keep it from pulverizing under the weight, this is a physical sensation, but the effects on the mind are just as potent. As your body remains paralyzed, your mind begins to paralyze itself as well, through feelings of numbness and exhaustion. There's nothing, just you, your multi-ton body, and an empty mind, emptied by exhaustion. Getting out of bed would be difficult. Basic hygiene, brushing your teeth, getting dressed, all would be difficult. Not only do we have this physical exhaustion from our thousand pound arms, leg, head, etc, but we also have the mental exhaustion from our mind attempting to fight against, process, deal with, move past, cope with, the traumatic experience that is to be paralyzed by our multi-ton body. Image attempting to speak to friends our family. Going to work, attending classes. All of this while we are physically and mentally exhausted. Physically and mentally numb. Let's imagine that somehow you make it out of bed, somehow you manage to move your thousand pound arms, thousand pound legs, and manage to stand up. Eating is out of the question so you attempt to perform some hygene tasks. Walking seems too difficult as your legs are too heavy, crawling, or dragging your feet seem like more viable options. Your legs are still heavy, but these methods at least help take some of the weight off. You slowly drag your feet to the bathroom, you look in the mirror and look seemingly normal. If anyone were to see you right now they would have no idea that you feel like your body weighs a ton. That's one of the difficult parts of it all, no one knows, no one can recognize this. You want to scream for help, but the exhaustion is too much, and sadly, no one will notice you- in desperate need of help. You attempt to pick up your tooth brush to brush your teeth but it too weighs a thousand pounds. The toothpaste? Also a thousand pounds. Moving the toothbrush back and forth upon your teeth means pulling a thousand pounds back and forth. Just attempting to imagine the rest of the day, all of the seemingly simple and small tasks no longer are simple and small but rather become an almost unattainable goal. During those days where you are able to attain these goals, it feels like you've graduated Harvard. Except your Harvard graduation is picking up your toothbrush, and no one would understand. (Part two: an emotional sensation) In addition to the heaviness I discussed above, there's also the emotional sensation of emptiness. How can someone so heavy feel so empty? Imagine, You wake up in an alternative reality, in this alternative reality everything you've ever known is gone. Your family, your brother, your sister, your mom, your grandparents, your dog, your cat, your pet iguana, your significant other, your place of employment, your school, your favorite pen, your phone, your closet, your clothes, your car, your favorite song, and favorite flower, all of it is gone. It has vanished into thin air and now all that is left is a void. Everything. Big and small, from the large and important things that you could never forget, to the small things that you hardly even notice until they're gone. In this alternative reality, you know all of these things once existed, you remember them. You know that your everything was once here and now it's gone. Imagine, the wave- no tsunami of emptiness that would overcome you at the realization that your everything is suddenly gone. Remembering that it existed and now standing in the vastness of the emptiness that is its disappearance. This is the emptiness, the vast, great, emptiness that is felt by millions in the world suffering from depression. After months or years of this heaviness and this emptiness one becomes very tired, exhausted, lethargic, hopeless, angry- nothingness. For many people struggling with suicidal thoughts, at the core of it all, at the root of it all, they do not want to die. Rather, they want an escape from it all, from what this brief post (brief compared to the totality of what people actually feel) has described. They want healing, but with the exhaustion, with the emptiness, with the thousand pounds, with the no one recognizing the suffering that's going on inside, they feel like that is their only escape. Their one and only want to simply, take a break. Depression is a very silent disease. Depr
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Let the pain of love be the longing
rather than the lack. Let it be a want for closeness rather than indifference. The emptiness of my heart said, "You love so hard, that's why I'm here, perhaps if you love yourself I'd clear". But a love for myself includes love for her So, emptiness, make yourself at home here. "Me gustan las mujeres esdrújulas sin brújula sin mítica con tónica. las que aman con las vísceras las células las glándulas las rítmicas intrépidas impúdicas las pérfidas ingrávidas poéticas las mágicas las lésbicas lunáticas Me gustas tú, Andrómeda erótica magnífica política MUJERICA” Cántico, Rosa María Roffiel (México, 1945) I have always had many thoughts, ideas, concepts, and insights. Many feelings, of joy, of sadness, confusion, excitement, happiness, nostalgia, everything. The many facets of the human experience, felt by every blood vessel, every cell, every atom, every minuscule part that makes up me. All felt infinitely by the micro and the macro of every single part of me. All stuck in my head. I am a deep feeler, and also a deep thinker. All these thoughts and feelings that flow like a river, and at times like a tsunami, or a waterfall, or a rainstorm, or a droplet, or a desert. I needed an outlet. I mean, I have all these thoughts and feelings. I’ve always considered myself a thinker and a feeler, why not do something with that? And that led me here. I researched blogging, how do you do it? How does one become a “blogger”? What even is a blog? Why should I even get a blog? And I found a lot of answers, too many in fact. Google pages upon google pages of thousands of results. "Pick me! I am the correct advice!" "No, pick me, this is the correct advice, everyone else is lying!" Professionals, the veterans, the ones who got into blogging back in 2006 telling me, little me, the one with many thoughts and feelings, a laundry list of things.
Nope this isn’t intimidating at all. Or overwhelming, just a list of 11 different platforms and the very distinct pros and cons of every single one of them all compiled neatly for me to read at 2 AM when I decided that this would be the 2 AM idea that I actually follow through with.
Oh, okay, a niche, interesting. How does the one with many thoughts, ideas, concepts, and insights find a niche? The one with a lot of joy, and sadness, confusion, and feelings. The one where they range almost as vastly as the landscapes of the world? We have waterfalls, deserts, and forests, and jungles. Prairies, countryside, urban landscape, we have filth, landfills, war zones, poverty. We have multi-million dollar homes with one person living in them, we have animals, and shelters, and homelessness, and grocery stores, and skies, and space. We have so much. So many stories, so many circumstances. My thoughts, my ideas, my concepts, my insights, all ranging just as vastly. How do I find a niche? Must I have a niche? Let me search some more,
Well, I guess I’m not making a blog then. . . . . . . . . . I’ve never felt like I fit in, like everywhere I went I was never a perfect fit. Either extremely off, or just slightly off, nonetheless I was always the odd one out. Like something was missing within me. If only I had this something, I would fit in. And the fault was mine, it was always me who was missing something. Everyone else fit into the group, they had all the criteria to fit in. I was the one missing something, I was the oddball, the purple sheep because black sheep was still too common. So it was me. I tried and tried. To contort, to bend, to mold. Let me just fit in somewhere, anywhere. Please. And I bent, and folded, and contorted, and attempted to mold, time and time again. Over and over again, all my life. Years on end, where am I? Who am I? Where do I belong? And here I was, searching for a niche, coming full circle with never fitting in. My many thoughts, concepts, ideas, and insights. My many feelings of joy, and sadness, excitement, and pain. My story, my entirety, searching for a niche. A box called a niche, one where I must fold and bend and contort. Cut off parts of myself in order to make myself fit, ah yes, a niche. For the deep feeler and the deep thinker, a niche. How about this? Let me just pick one of my many thoughts, concepts, ideas and insights. Maybe if I pick just one of those, that could be my niche. Or maybe if I pick just one of my types of traumas, one of my types of sadness, that could be my niche. But wait, I don’t want this all to be sad. I’m not always sad, yes I’ve experienced sadness and I want to talk about it, but that’s not all of me. I want it to be happy too, I want to share my happiness and my inspiration. Maybe I’ll just not share the sad part of myself, I mean who wants to even be sad anyway? Or share stories of sadness, or share each other's suffering so that we know we’re not alone? Perhaps I shall make this an inspirational blog, I mean, sadness is overrated anyway. Inspiration is totally in right now. Or I could just pick one of my ideas, and focus on things that relate to that. But I have too many ideas, this is the whole point, to compile them into something. Just to put them somewhere because it’s too many ideas to just leave in my head. This doesn’t make sense. I need a niche. A real niche. Even here I don’t fit in, it's never a perfect fit, never has been. Even with this niche thing, I tried to mold, bend, and contort myself, my experiences, what makes me, me. My many thoughts and insights, my ideas, my theories. My joys, my sadness, my happiness, my many stories. Bend. Fold. Mold. Contort. Make. It. Fit. Well it doesn’t. I don’t fit. I am not a niche. So you know what? Forget the niche. Screw it. This blog is about everything. It’s about you, it’s about me, it’s about everything that makes everything. It’s the most chaotic blog in the world, the one with no niche. Sorry, expert advice. AuthorVero. 1995. |
Vero1995 |