Depressed-You is an Idiot

I'm going to say first that if you have depression, and you think talking about it will be triggering, then stop. And go here instead.
Or here.  

For the past few years, I've been having issues with depression.
Apathy and insomnia is the worst of it lately, but it's all bad.
I like to say I'm a writer, but I can barely explain what depression feels like, because you read books about it and look at web md's symptom pages (warning, going to web md's symptom checker may cause you to think you have leukemia), and you still can't quite grasp it.

But, okay. Here's my attempt at explaining depression - for me, at any rate.  For those of you who already know, skip down a few paragraphs.  Go ahead.  That's where I'm talking about how I'm dealing with it.  Shoo.

I find it easiest to compare depression to a migraine, because I've had my fair share of them (that's a lie.  The only "fair share" of migraines a person can have is none.  I have had way too many migraines.) and it's easier to explain a migraine (ow, ow, my brain is broken and I can't see) than it is to explain depression (ow, ow, my brain is broken and I can't see because I've been crying for the past week).  For one, it's easier to be funny.  You can be more open about migraines, because we don't have the same stigmas about physical pain than we do about emotional pain.  With depression, I feel like I can't be as funny about it because while I can compare a migraine to evil little gremlins driving spikes into your brain while playing *shudders* country music, I can't say the same thing about depression without sounding, ha ha, crazy.

Depression is like having a migraine for three weeks months years and not having any Excedrin.  Straight up.  Sometimes you're listening to music that you like and the migraine goes away for a few hours, or you're talking with people that you actually like and you forget that your head hurts.  But the one surety for those entire three weeks is that it will come back.  

Depression is like all of those scenes in horror movies where the heroine is bashing away at the villain with the baseball bat screaming "Why won't you die?"  And then the villain stays around for the next 8 terrible sequels.  

The important thing to know about depression is that sometimes it does go away, and sometimes, with help, it stays away.  But in my experience, it comes back.  And sometimes it creeps up on you, so that you don't realize you have depression until you're lying on your friend's couch staring at the wall crying.  And then you can talk about it, because depressed-you isn't the same as you-you, and you-you has the ability to talk about what's wrong.  Depressed-you is a proud idiot with a mental illness.  Don't Listen to her.  

Here's the part where I talk about what I do.  What I've been doing.  Those of you who skipped down, welcome back to the party.  The depression party.  We have black balloons, but our confetti is made out of glitter, which is the prettiest confetti, and we stay up all night because when we go to sleep we have really bad dreams.

What I do is I figure out what triggers me.  And I avoid it.  I tell my closest friends that I have issues and we work on it.  Together.  Community is the thing that helps me the most, honestly.  Lately I've been working on a blog where I talk about the sort of things I avoid talking about here.  It's depression-me's blog.  Even though I'm fairly sure no one reads it, I like thinking that when I'm older, and better, (and famous and popular and rich, because this is my fantasy, dammit) maybe some kid will hear me reference that blog, and look it up, and maybe they'll read it and think, "Dayum.  If this lady is so effed up, and ended up so cool, then... I guess there's hope for me."

That's what helps.  That's what keeps me going.  I don't want to change the world.  Just someone in it.  I make goals for myself.  I want to be at my cousin's graduation.  I want to write a book.  And one day I want to read the last book of the Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss.    And it's going to be awesome.

Meaning

I wrote this a while ago on Facebook for a few friends. I figured I might as well post it up here as well.

Life does have meaning.
I know that sometimes it is hard to see it, and sometimes it is harder still to know that you do, but it does.
There is meaning in the way that branches curve against the sky, in the way that the sunset sometimes lights up the horizon in a last burst of color before dropping down, in the way that sometimes it doesn't. There is meaning in a child's laughter and a grandmother's tears.
There is meaning in the way that a dog will sometimes look up at you with such a look of devotion... and immediately afterward eat your favorite pair of slippers.
There is meaning in the knowledge of friendship and in the possibility of friendship.
Life has meaning.
People might read this and completely get what I mean.
People might read this and not understand it at all.
And you know what? There's meaning in that, as well.
The quest to find meaning in the world is everywhere in history and myth - it's a common human striving.
Some people have to find meaning on their own, and some people have to be shown it, but it is for everyone.
Usually this quest for meaning takes the whole of your lifetime, and too many people are brought low by hopelessness long before they ever find it.
Do not be brought low by hopelessness.
Your life is your own.
Your life is what you make of it.
The human life span is something like seventy years and it is a waste, a waste, in not appreciating that length. Too many people are influenced by the romanticism of suicide, the lure of helplessness and hopelessness, and they splinter those seventy years into fragments.
And I have no sympathy for them.
There is always hope if you are willing to take it.
The possibility for failure lies only in your willingness to quit.

So don't give up.
Find your own meaning in the feeling of a friend's hand in your own, the smell of the air after it rains, the bright colors of the sunsets and sunrises in your life. When it seems as though everyone is trying to shape you into a mold, think about hope and perseverance and the bright future that lays ahead of you if you are willing to make it.
The future is never set in stone, and you are never what others tell you that you are.
You are what you make of yourself.
The responsibilities, the joys and the sorrows, the highs and the lows, the hope and the moments when it seems that all hope is gone, the friends, the lovers, and the mentors wait for you, at a point somewhere up ahead in your life. All you have to do is reach out and take them.