Over the last couple of weeks I've been left alone with myself.
It's a weird thing to say I know, but hear me out: very rarely in my life do I spend such long periods of time alone. None of us really do, the way the western world moves doesn't often allow time for long periods of personal reflection. We are a world made up of having more and making more and doing more, and in a lot of ways that's incredible, but it doesn't leave you al that much time to hang out with yourself.
Now I love being around people, I find it helpful and interesting and exciting. But... I love being by myself. I love getting coffee solo and reading alone and watching YouTube videos with me. I like having the house to myself just to do my thing and hang out. I am entirely happy in my own company. But during this kind of blissful time at home hanging out and focussing on very little: in spending so much time with myself I have noticed things about myself. I have taken a lot of notice of my current situations in life, my health, my relationships with the people around me and how I feel about the people and things that happen to me. It's a strange kind of self awareness, and I say strange because I don't tend to analyse my feelings this much in my day to day, I'd never get anything done. Its something that I think people become numb too purely due to the fact that in our lives we don't have the time to sit and consider, "huh, and how does that makes me feel?". We proceed, we proceed giving a millisecond to thoughts and getting on with the next crisis- that is life. We can numb out certain aspects of our lives, dull the constant noise around us and continue, unaffected.
Depression and anxiety in many ways can be seen as the opposite of this, a hyper-awareness state: spending too much time with yourself and feeling every worry and every pain you feel. I am not advocating a detachment from your emotional self, it's so important to be able to address and understand yourself, but I just don't think you need to feel everything you go through- you just can't, we as human beings are not durable enough to feel every single thing every time our emotions change. Sometimes a little observation can be better than active participation. When you're hyper aware of your feelings those little comments made stick around in your head and explode into huge back stories and opinions you think other people might have about you and what you're doing. Your friend being off with you is the end of an era. Your work is going to overwhelm you, so you never want to go out again, you convince yourself you're sick etc etc etc. In short, you can spiral spending too much time in your own head. You feel sort of trapped after a while.
It's hard to articulate those feelings, to the people around you, even the people who care about you. It's a wholly isolating experience to feel pain and not be able to pinpoint your injury, and worse when you're not sure if you're actually just being crazy and neurotic. It was only a few days ago that I saw something that, for me at least, explained the mindset and mood shifts that come with waves of depression.
'Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows'.
If you haven't seen the film or read the books I'm sorry my loves but this metaphor is not nearly as effective for you as it was for me. But for the rest of your nerds out there listen in as I explain what I mean: In the last book Harry, Ron and Hermione are hunting for horcrux's and trying desperately to stay hidden and together and strong. They have one horcrux the locket, inside a piece of Lord Voldermort's evil soul is alive and kicking, living it's life. Each of those beautiful threesome take turns wearing this locket and it has some weird effects on them all. In this metaphor the locket is a a physical depression, that you can put on and take off.
The locket drains the wearer of energy, makes them angry and hurt and sad, they feel alone and isolated form the other too and are prone to little explosions of emotion- they are caught up in this world of negativity and insecurity and pain, but the second they take off this locket its like they can breathe again and they feel like THEMSELVES. That is what I personally feel is the worst thing about depression: not feeling like yourself, not feeling like you're acting or talking the way you want, not participating in your own life. Life is like this endurance test, how many weeks can you make it feeling this deflated and defeated, this big heavy locket around your neck screwing with your thoughts. You don't sound like you, you sound like a bitter tired version of yourself. You don't feel right, out of sync with yourself and the rest of the world. In terms of the book this caused Harry to get angry, frustrated and Ron got jealous and hurt, he felt so much pain he left people he loved.
It's nerdy and a bit weird I know to compare mental illness to the effects of a charmed locket in a fictional book. I am aware the responses of the characters and the entire world of wizardry to which I'm referring are the figment of a beautiful lady's imagination. But somehow in the world J.K Rowling created, you were dragged through every one of Harry's moods and Ron's anger and Hermione's jealousy. If you were as invested as I was in those characters, you could empathise so much the minute they stopped acting like themselves because of the evil little thing around their neck. You could see them pushing people away and their anger at themselves and everyone around them.
I don't know what I aimed to achieve with this post, other than to share something I had discovered and thought to be wholly interesting and helpful in my understanding of how depression works and what it is, and to have some insight into it.
It just allows it to be a fabricated thing. Imagine depression is a locket you can take it off. The mad mood and the sadness and jealousy and anxiety and isolation of it can be lifted away from you and your body physically, you can return to yourself and life is resumed. You have to be self aware enough to see how it's making you act, and strong enough not to let it win. God knows it will put up a fight (I refer you to when Ron tries to destroy the locket, and it throws every insecurity he ever had right back at him to try and overwhelm him). But once you do it, it's gone, once its off, its off and once its destroyed it can't hurt you anymore.
I find that reassuring sometimes, when I feel like it's winning, I hope you do too.
