Depression Awareness - Of Lizards and Dragons

***Depression/Self-Harm trigger warning**

If you or someone you know is suffering from depression or thoughts of suicide, please reach out! The National Suicide Prevention Hotline number is 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

I managed to get myself kicked off an acquaintance's Facebook list yesterday for commenting on what I felt was a condemning and hurtful opinion she posted about depression and suicide. I told her I felt that perhaps she should withhold passing judgment on a man who lost his battle with a disease she seemed to know so little about. Rather than share what she said (I can't access the post anymore to accurately quote her anyway), I will simply say it was obvious that not only had she never experienced clinical depression, the ensuing discussion in the comments showed she also had no interest whatsoever in  learning new information from people who had been there, done that.

We, as a society, HAVE to stop labeling those suffering from depression as "weak" and "cowardly" and "selfish".  Depression is so much more than "being sad".  Even though we have grown leaps and bounds in understanding and accepting the many facets of mental illness, we still directly and indirectly blame depression sufferers for the very symptoms of the disease they are fighting. We ask them how they can be sad with so much beauty in the world.  We shame them into feeling guilty for not feeling happy because oh, look at all the blessings they have! We tell them to "just get over it and move on."  We tell them we understand how they feel, that everyone gets the blues, that we've felt sad and hopeless before too.  We condemn their suicidal thoughts and tell them as we look down our noses what a horrible person they are to even consider "taking the easy way out" and putting their loved ones through that.

Please understand, I make no claims of being an expert on depression.  My experience is limited to once- or twice-upon-a-long-time-ago, when hormone roller coasters or traumatic events left me teetering precariously close over that edge that separates "hopeless and alone and deeply morose" from the dark precipice of "I am damaged goods, a worthless burden undeserving of the air I breathe." I toed that line close enough to get a blessedly-short glimpse of the battle with clinical depression. From reading and listening to accounts of strangers and dear friends who have battled, and with my own comparatively minor brushes with it, the following is my best attempt to help those who may not comprehend get perhaps a small glimmer of understanding just how horrific depression can get.

Depression lies. It is a simple and cold description, borrowed from one of my favorite authors.  Depression lies to you oh so convincingly, saying "you are worthless, a burden, not worth a damn thing.  No one really loves you because really, who would possibly want to?! You, the pathetic socially bumbling ugly waste of perfectly good space?"  or perhaps "The nerve you have, to survive when so many around you did not! What makes you think you're any better than them? Any one of them would be worth ten of you! How dare you live while they died?"

Those lies morph themselves into truth and create this horrible dark cloud in your mind that blinds you from all logic and common sense that might come in handy to fend off the lies.  Depression lies, and those lies severely inhibit if not paralyze your ability to see reason, to feel worthy of love, deserving of happiness. While your loved ones continue to see you as a thing of beauty, one to be cherished and loved, all you can see when you look at yourself, figuratively and/or literally, is a terribly dark and twisted Picasso-like version of the real you.

Sometimes you can fight back against those lies, hitting it with every ounce of reason and bit of self worth you have.  And sometimes you're able to tread water.  Sometimes the fight works just enough to enable you to put on that happy mask you don't really feel and go out into the world and pretend that everything's groovy, pretend you can function, try to fake it until you make it. Sometimes that's as dark as it gets before the light moves back in.

But sometimes you get tired of treading water.  Sometimes all you want to do is crawl into the darkest spot in the safest place you know and just not think, not exist, until the dark clouds roll away and you can begin to love yourself a little again.

Just like other diseases, depression has no bias, draws no racial lines, preys on the poor and the wealthy alike.  According to the Mayo Clinic, the exact causes aren't known, but there are some contributing factors seem to be involved: inherited traits, hormone and chemical imbalances, biological differences, traumatic life events.

And just like other diseases, there is no shame in seeking out treatment, no cowardice in asking for help with the battle.  Would we chastise a cancer patient for opting for chemotherapy?  A diabetic for taking insulin?

Would we go online and publicly shame someone who lost their battle to cancer and say "Well they just didn't try hard enough" or "There were more treatment options, different drugs, other surgeries they could have tried...how selfish of them for losing their battle before they tried them all!  How cruel and unloving and self centered of them to think of no one but themselves!"

Hell no, we wouldn't!

So how is it that it's okay to do it when someone loses their battle with depression?  How is it okay for someone who may have managed here and there to stomp a tiny lizard-sized bout of the blues, be the judge of a  man's last battle in a life-long war with dragons?