Depression Is a Fucking Liar

Thursday, September 12, 2013

This is National Suicide Prevention Week.

As many of you know, my friend Janiece lost her daughter to suicide this summer, and another friend’s cousin committed suicide earlier in the summer, so this week has been on my mind more than normal this year.

First, my thoughts and love are with Janiece and her family, as they learn to live with this terrible loss. Second, I want to note that JR and Stacey are doing a memorial walk in honor of Janiece’s family.

But mostly, I just want to remind people:

DEPRESSION IS A FUCKING LIAR.

I’m not just saying that because The Bloggess says it, but because I know it to be true.

I’ve suffered from depression, anxiety, and obsessive compulsive disorder since I was a teenager, though it wasn’t until my late 20s that the OCD was diagnosed, and it I was in my mid thirties before my anxiety was diagnosed.

Uncountable are the number of days where I struggled to get out of bed, struggled to keep from self-harm, struggled to keep going.

Uncountable are the times the voice in my head has told me that I was worthless, that my very existence caused more harm than good for those around me.

I know how hard that voice is to silence, because it’s coming from inside your head–somewhere you can’t escape–and it’s repeating and replaying every cruel thing that has ever been said to you, and every time you have hurt someone, even if cruelty wasn’t your original intent.

I know how your brain can be an echo chamber for all these negative thoughts and horrible memories.

But even still, I know–I KNOW–these things are lies. I know that I am much more than the sum of all the mistakes I’ve made in my life.

For me, what keeps me going is the knowledge that there are people who would be hurt–and hurt terribly–if I was gone. So I keep going, because I don’t want to cause more harm than I already have.

BUT

It’s not all dark days and despair.

To counteract the dark inside my head, I try to look, every day and all the time, for beauty and joy and silliness and happiness in my life, and to cultivate those things, so I have more moments of joy and silliness.

And I try to remember that depression is a fucking liar, and without me, the world would be a far less silly place, and that can’t be a good thing.