A Little Insight Into a Depressive Episode

I’ve hit a rough patch. And when I say rough patch. I don’t mean I’ve had a fall out with a friend or I didn’t quite reach that A grade.

I mean an I-can-hardly-get-out-of-bed rough patch.

The kind of rough patch that seems like it isn’t going to end. The kind of rough patch that makes you hate yourself. The kind of rough patch that leaves you crying in bed every night because you don’t quite remember what it was like to feel happy.

I’ve felt this rough patch coming on for a long time; I’ve basically been putting it off. I know I’ve felt bad. I know I have felt down and anxious and tired. I know it was there in my mind scratching to come out in full force, but I quietly told myself “not now, you need to work,” and I carried on smiling.

But something snapped last week, and it’s like everything I was feeling is now 10 times the size.

That sadness I felt now feels as though it is smothering me. The emptiness is now a huge void making me feel nothing but also everything at the same time, and my brain is so confused.

How can I feel so empty yet feel so much all at once?

I don’t know.

It makes me someone I’m not, but then this is me. It turns me into a zombie who is so tired that all I want to do is sit in bed in the dark. It makes me antisocial, but then I crave to talk to somebody. It makes me angry at the tiniest thing, but then I’ll start to cry seconds later.

It’s like something in my mind is screaming at me but the voice that comes from my mouth is tired and dull. My mind is running at 100 mph, and I can’t seem keep up or make sense of it.

It’s confusing and so frustrating. I don’t understand why I get like this. I don’t understand why I can hardly get out of bed, why I can’t bring myself to do my essays even though the deadlines are getting closer by the minute. I don’t know why I can hardly talk to my friends and family or why I can’t seem to enjoy my hobbies anymore.

I don’t know why, but at some point in the future — it could be tomorrow, it could be next month — but some point in the future I will wake up in the morning and it won’t be so crushing. It’ll be there… it always is. But I’ll be able to hide it away in the corner of my mind. And on that day I’ll wonder why I was being “so dramatic.” I’ll say, “oh look you’re not that bad. It was just a dramatic day.” But then the next day I’ll wake up with the crushing feeling of dread again, and I’m back to square one. And it isn’t being dramatic. Not at all but that is what it’s like having a mind like this.

This. This is the side of anxiety and depression that people don’t know. The side that isn’t really spoken about. People think depression is having suicidal thoughts, and while that can very much be a part of it for some, it can be more than that. This is the bit where I don’t know why I’m carrying on, but I’m doing it anyway. Because I know  after a low, there’s an up. I don’t know when it will be. Where or how. But there will be one.

I feel like I’m losing my mind. It’s the bit where I’m in my bed at 3 a.m. crying my eyes out because I feel so so alone. Where my mind is telling me I’m not smart enough to do my essays. Where it tells me my friends don’t want to talk to me anymore. Where it asks me what the point of getting up in a morning is. The part where I feel as though I’m suffocating and no one can see me. Where it makes me feel horrible, weak and little.

It’s the part where I think I would not wish feeling like this on my worst enemy.

It’s the insight into a mind that has hit a depressive episode.

If you or someone you know needs help, visit our suicide prevention resources page.
If you need support right now, call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. 

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Stock image by Grandfailure