How To Deal With Your Depression (A Guide For Me, By Me)

Edan Joan May

11/12/2022

Content warning: self-harm, grief and death

Image description: a monochromatic grey image with a desk, a journal, a cracked coffee cup, an open laptop and a wilted plant surrounded by crumpled pieces of paper. The only colour comes from three bright notes on the wall: a yellow one saying ‘Breathe’ in black, a green one saying ‘I am okay’ in black, and a pink one saying ‘Keep Smiling’.

I think that all I’ve ever wanted is for people to hear me. They don’t even have to understand. Just listen.

Writing down my feelings was the best decision I never meant to make. Through doing it I accidentally created these vignettes of my emotional health. Found in notes apps, designated notebooks, scraps of paper and random Microsoft Word documents are a tapestry of my undoing’s and rebuilding’s and undoing’s again. The sentence above was written on October 24 in 2020, and I truly have no idea of its context. I know that I was feeling sad and alone and needed to pick an assortment of letters to make sense of whatever was going on in my mind, and so they were released and then they were locked away safely in these various mediums that no-one but the person who writes in (and sometimes conjures the willpower to read) it would understand.

Here’s the thing, I don’t know if anyone can, does, or ever will understand me. Not through their own fault, of course, but also not through mine. How does someone understand that you were literally born wrong? I spent the first three months of my life in hospital and the first eleven months with a gaping hole in my right cheek. The only life I’ve ever known is one of physical pain and cancelled plans and months of limited jaw functions. I’ve had my jaw purposely broken three times and that isn’t the worst thing I’ve felt. Because of twenty-one years and seven months of hospital I feel like a burden to everyone around me, something that is only heightened by my own fucked up brain chemicals?

Here’s how I try to make people understand me. I tell them stories and desperately hope that they see the cracks in-between the moments where I’m trying to get them to laugh.

It’s so funny but I’ve found out that I freeze when I get really scared. Like what kinda survival instinct is that? I found out a few years ago when I was waiting for my third surgery in a year, and I spent the whole time in the waiting room hyperventilating then froze every time a doctor came near me. Like how dumb is that? What’s that gonna do, you dickhead? I know right! It’s so stupid! Man, I’m dumb.

For how else am I to stave off the personal failure of criticism if not by mercilessly tearing myself and my work down before I am even a mere thought in the mind of someone else? In fact, the first draft of this essay was returned with the feedback that I was being ‘too self-deprecating’. Whoops.

The thing about depression (or at least my depression) is that it is not sadness. Sure, there’s lots of crying, including that time I spent three nights in a row crying in someone else’s house all alone until I threw up, but that’s not what scares me about going into a severe episode again. It’s the absence of emotions. The times when I’m walking into Watergardens’ shopping centre and realise that the world feels fuzzy and I can’t tell if anything is real anymore. I see things but nothing actually sinks in. I look both ways before crossing a road, and halfway across I realise I saw a car coming. I squint at the tiniest lights and wince at every sound. Upon obsessively searching online one night I learn about derealisation. Or is it depersonalisation? I do get the two confused sometimes. What I know for sure is that when I somehow do manage to laugh, no matter how sincere it is, it feels like an act. I’m either faking laughing in a pitiful attempt to feel something that I think I never will again, or I laugh so there’s no way I could actually be depressed.

Or I’m going to the movies and thrilled to get out and just be with the person who has known me for over half my life and has seen some rather unpleasant sides of me, but still actively wants to be in my life, and as I watch one character scream about loving another I feel a switch.

You’re consumed with thoughts of being alone and unloved and oh god no one will even be at your funeral. You’ll be buried in one of the shitty graves that you frequently walk past and pity the poor soul who is decomposing there, not because they’re dead but because no one cared enough about them to put anything more than a name and a date on it.

On the drive home I force myself to try and act normal because the last thing I want is to drive away another person and make that funeral attendance lower. I will later find out that they just thought I really didn’t like the movie.

My depression leads me to forming one-sided bonds with people, where I put them on a pedestal and put all my faith in them as if they can cure me. Then I get surprised when they don’t understand me, nor would they particularly care to. And why would they?

We met on Tinder, have seen each other in person twice, both times they’ve done skids in their car as I’ve sat in the backseat acting like I don’t think it’s one of the lamest things I could be doing, and they’re constantly telling me about this girl that they’re interested in.
Sometimes I sit in my car for over an hour in the driveway because I don’t want to go in, but I’ve also got nowhere else to go.
On one date, a different guy never let me talk but then told me empty flatteries at the end because he wanted to get in my pants. I did not let him, but I still hoped he’d message me as I caught the train home because then I could pretend I was desired.

My depression is getting in a fight with my mother because I was too anxious to apply for a job to work for people I know, so instead I spent hours walking literal circles around town. Because I don’t know what’s wrong with me and she doesn’t know that there is anything wrong at all. When I finally go home as the sun leaves to light the other half of the world, I get in another fight. That night I cried for so long that I decided the best solution was to down a shitload of Oxycodone prescribed from my last surgery so I could finally get to sleep. I was awake for two more hours and then the next day I was severely dehydrated and feeling worse.

It is not eating or showering for days and barely even realising, and it’s not even processing what a major problem that is.

My depression is all of that happening to me before I even was diagnosed. It’s explaining all of it away and simply blocking out any fear that arises from the symptoms. Back in October 2018 I wrote:

You’re getting worse than you’ve ever been and that is terrifying. You had four consecutive nights of crying so hard you threw up. You’re not okay and you don’t know why but you want to get better.

Here’s something to know about me, I only started telling people about those four nights in the past year. And I’ve still never told anyone why.

It’s because I felt so alone.

When I was 16, I was getting bullied and got forced to go to a psychologist. She was a lovely lady who tried her best, but it wasn’t good enough. She asked me questions and made me do homework, but I moved past the bullying and she didn’t. I wanted to talk about why I would sometimes spontaneously burst into tears or not be able to feel anything. She’d turn around and ask me how the boys who bullied me were treating me. I’d say I had nothing to do with them and honestly rarely saw and thought about them and she’d keep asking about them. I didn’t go back to her once my mental healthcare plan ended. Around this time at school, I wrote a letter for an assignment which was read by the teacher and I was immediately recommended to go to the student welfare office. I was confused as it all seemed normal to me and even more confused when I missed the appointment, and it was never followed up (although the head teacher did once try and throw a table in my class, so she definitely had her own things going on). A few years later, after the aforementioned crying until I puked, I decided I wasn’t going to get better on my own and I desperately needed help. This time it was an older lady who wore a heavy gold cross around her neck. She was also lovely and laughed when I said something pissed me off like I had said something scandalous. (When I was nine years old, I was telling everyone about my brand-new word: bullshit. She wasn’t going to work out long term). She listened to me when I talked about being sad and she just really tried her best. I remember sitting in my GP’s office for the care plan check-up.

‘So what are you being treated for?’ She asked me.

‘I haven’t been told anything. Is there something I am?’

‘They think you’ve got depression.’

There’s this show that started in 2015 and ran for four seasons on the CW network, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. In it the main character, Rebecca, does a whole lot of fucked up and confusing shit that ultimately never leaves her feeling good or satisfied, instead it often ends up with her self-loathing and all-round feeling worse. While I had never done anything near as insane or self-sabotaging as Rebecca had (for example not once have I ever staged a break-in in order to get a guy I was obsessed with to come to my rescue), I recognised myself in it every so often, and I didn’t love that.

Romanticising the hell out of someone you barely know?

Done that.

Lied to other people so much that you kind of start to believe it? Check.
Recognising that you’re not acting ‘right’ but not actually changing anything about yourself?

Yep.

In the show after having a confrontation with her mother, Rebecca downs a whole bunch of pills in an attempt to kill herself. Been there, unintentionally done that.

Now Rebecca did wake up in hospital after her purposeful attempt where she was later diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. The thing about Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is that it’s a musical. The number simply titled ‘My Diagnosis’ contains Rebecca singing about how much she longs to be diagnosed so she can feel a sense of belonging and understanding, and physically shows her opening an envelope of light which she is bathed in. This is what hearing those words from my GP felt like to me. It meant that no matter how alone I felt, I wasn’t alone. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 23.8% of Australians aged 15- 24 have been diagnosed with depression. Not to mention, as Beyond Blue points out, biological females, people who live in rural areas, and people with a family history of mental illness are more likely to also have depression. So, thanks to my chromosomes/my age/living in a semi-rural town/my Gran, Nanna, mother, and sister for that one.

It was months later, by another doctor, that the suggestion of medication was made. I did my little mental health quiz and got my prescription. It worked for a bit, and then it didn’t. Before going to another doctor, I saw a counsellor at uni. She was nice and listened to me and made valuable suggestions. But what meant the world to me was that she assured me that I was doing everything I could to help myself. It was the chemicals in my brain that were screwing me around. So, I went to another doctor and did the quiz again. I scored lower than last time and got told I had major depression and got put on a higher dosage of medication. These made me feel worse than I ever had. So, I stopped that one, got put on my third attempt at meds and I lived functionally ever after.

Then my Gran died. She was one of the people I loved the most. My childhood was spent eating pancakes at her house on Saturday mornings and my very short adulthood eating scones with her as we sipped our coffees at a café each second Friday. The Friday before we went to that café with her, saw a movie and went shopping, and then dropped her off at her house with a hug, a kiss on the cheek, and an ‘I love you’. On Tuesday she collapsed on her lounge room floor and had a stroke. The Tuesday night, around 6pm she was taken off life support, and then around 3pm the next day she stopped breathing. I don’t remember much after 6pm the night of her funeral. Not because of grief, but because in a move that I am still highly ashamed of, I unintentionally got alcohol poisoning and had to get rushed to the emergency room, where I woke up the next morning just a few beds away from where I had last seen my Gran conscious. I am told that there are pictures of me in a hospital bed that night with my father holding my hand. I think I need to see them and someday when I am braver, I will.

‘I get it,’ a nurse had told me, ‘you just wanted to feel nothing for a bit.’

‘No. I just wanted to feel something.’

I don’t know if she heard me.

Then I got put on a higher dosage.

Eight months later my grandfather died. He had dementia and wanted to die (he told me the night he was admitted to hospital, as I held his hand to stop him ripping out his IV). I watched him slowly decay and mourned him before he even lost his heartbeat. But this time I had enough self-awareness and discipline that I didn’t sabotage myself or anyone around me. I still don’t know if the sliver of relief I felt in that time was more for him or for me.

How To Deal with Your Depression:

A Guide by Edan. For Edan!

Hey girl! Are you lying in bed all day watching shows like H2O: Just Add Water or the 2017 reboot of Duck Tales, in what is likely a desperate attempt to reclaim a childhood you never felt like you had? Not hungry? Too lazy to shower or do your hair or get dressed or do literally anything? Then you’re depressed! But don’t worry! Using these simple steps, you can help yourself:

Own it! Don’t play it off for laughs or confusion; you’re not stupid. Admit you’re not feeling okay.
Tell your family and friends! You don’t want to be an asshole now do you? No, you need to be held accountable for any shitty things you do or say, and they need to know it’s not personal.
Let yourself be depressed! Take a day or two or even three. Feel those feelings, girl. If you’re upset about things your family did years ago, feel it. You know that they were just a clueless as you were and have long forgiven them for any wrongdoings, but that doesn’t make pain go away. Cry over nothing. Don’t shower if you feel like you can’t. Just do the bare minimum and let it all out.
Put on a comfort show! An NBC sitcom that finished years ago should do the trick. Just lie there and watch until you exhale through your nose and slowly begin to forget exactly why you’re like this.
Start small! Walk the dog. Shower and brush your teeth consecutively. Do your uni work and slowly spend more time with people again.
Relax! Don’t stress about when the next episode will hit. Enjoy the spaces between and breathe. You know what to do when it happens again.

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Edan is a 23-year-old living in regional Victoria with her dog Kelvin, and cat Cinnamon. When she’s not procrastinating or accidentally taking naps she enjoys writing for herself and then sharing it with everyone but her family in hopes to make people feel less alone.