Life Doesn't Wait for the Depressed Brain

I woke up yesterday morning around 4 with a thought: life doesn’t wait for the depressed brain. When you live with depression, life somehow magically goes on around you, while you stand in the middle of it all screaming silently that you don’t want to get left behind. It is a frozen feeling, being stuck in a cage built by your mind, and the physical effects of that can stop you in your tracks. And life goes on around you. Life doesn’t wait, people still call and invite you out and you want so badly to say yes but your body won’t cooperate. Eventually anger sets in and the vicious cycle begins. But on the outside it’s so invisible.

I have battled personally with this since I was a kid. I have ups and downs, but the downs are really down when they occur. They are the suicidal thoughts that plague the brain and whisper that life has no meaning and you were only sent here to suffer. I combat that thinking with reminding myself that with everything I’ve gone through I have made it this far, I still have people who care about me, I’m not alone. Sometimes it works and other times I wait it out, holding onto the hope that it will get better, that the next could be better. I think that’s why I hold onto the idea of hope; it is quite literally sometimes the only thing that can get me through.

I may not be going through or experiencing the exact same thing as you, but I get the emotions behind it. This is by no means a condoning of suicide; it is simply me being human and letting others know you’re not alone if you feel that way. Life continues, it goes on and it feels like it shouldn’t sometimes. It feels unfair when you feel like you don’t have control over your own brain, but it can get better. I know it can. What we, the depressed brains, need are people to understand, to realize this is something we have to fight and to not be so harsh or judgmental. We need to be able to say  we are depressed without fear. We need to feel safe. We need to be able to shed light on this disease of the brain because very simply — life doesn’t wait and neither should we.

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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