Light of Depression

A Small Aspect of Depression

Depression is not something that is often actively felt. That is only in the most extreme cases. There can of course be moments where one finds himself/herself actively depressed. These are the hardest times.

So depression comes in two forms, really: Passive and active. These two forms differ in a lot of ways. There is not a perfect way to describe it. Forcing myself to put it into words is hard. The best I can think of is it being a stress. It is many different things at once. You feel its presence in many different ways. I suppose it differs for everyone, however readers who are also depressed may recognize some of the following things: A weight on the shoulders. Not a physical one, but as if they are covered by a heavy piece of cloth.

Like said before, it is not active, so you don't really feel the weight, but it feels as if there is something wearing you down. That you get tired faster, whilst thinking you should be able to do more.

Next is a gnawing feeling at the back of the head. As if something is eating away at your brain. It's not painful. There is no weird tingling either. It just feels as if there is a void, which is becoming larger, ever so slowly.

Thirdly, and this is probably only me, the chest. The reason I say that this is probably just me, is because I have never met anyone else. So it may not be rare at all, it is just that I have never met anyone, by my knowledge, who has this. A pain in the chest. I'd almost say heartbreak. Relationships do help with this, as far as I have experienced. Being with the one you really like and talking to them helps tonnes. In fact, now that I look at it, it may be heartbreak.

[Self-harm moment incoming] I cut myself in the chest to draw the pain, which was deep inside my body, crawling through my ribcage and stabbing the lungs and heart multiple times an hour, to the outside. The wounds felt good as they stung impeccably. It escalated to a point where I started cutting through my entire chest, with the skin almost literally ripping open by itself.

Lastly, and this is a complicated one; joy. There is talk of depressed people laughing more than the average person, because they are simply so miserable that it makes everything which is only slightly funny, absolutely hilarious. I don't know if this is a legitimate statement or not. With me, however, it is quite the other way around. Where others, also depressed people, to be clear, laugh, I cannot find it funny. There are only very few moments where I really laugh. Since New Year's Day, which is more close to 2.5 months ago, I have laughed (and I keep count) 6 times. Real, genuine laughter. For the rest, it has either been fake laughter, some slight grinning or even fake grinning, and smiling, real and fake as well. Why do I fake it so much? That should be obvious, but in case it is not, it is because I am afraid that I would be such a depressing influence on everyone, and that they would leave me.

That is passive depression. Summed up, it gives you feelings to indicate that it is there. It lets you know that you are depressed. It also weakens your resistance against insecurity gradually, which could in turn only make the depression worse.

Active depression is a whole different story. It is usually passive depression, which is then triggered so intensely that it becomes the centre of your attention. That is when one can lose themselves very easily to insecurity, suicidal tendencies or self-harm.

The feeling associated with this extremer version of depression, for me, as like being crushed into the floor with an endless wave of water. There is no way to escape as you run out of time. As you run out of the very air you breathe. Every step you take feels heavy and unnecessary. Every movement you make wears you out entirely. In the meantime, you have an extensive weight on your head. You don't see a point in anything anymore, you make rash decisions, you want to feel better and you try everything possible. If nothing helps anymore, and this can occur, then the choice between and endurance and giving up becomes easier every minute.

It is at this point that if that person has any friends around, they will most likely not even turn to them for help anymore. It is too late, unless the friends already know that it is going extremely downhill.

There is one more difference between passive and active depression, and it may surprise you. The awareness of the depression.

When passive, you would think it seeps into the background, but it remains just on the verge of that. It remains just active enough, it keeps sending just enough signals, not to be forgotten about. You are completely aware of the fact that you are depressed.

It is, in fact, when the depression is active, that you forget about it. You don't remember you are depressed. You might see this as a good thing, but if you think about it, it only means that you think that what you are feeling is something which is permanent, whilst it's really just a tiny episode. You think that it will remain like mentioned before for the rest of your life. In the heat of the moment, under the weight of the stress and under the pressure of time, you forget completely that you are depressed.

That is all I can explain for now about the two different types of depression which I go through. I hope that it enlightened those who needed to be enlightened, and maybe made others think about things, or look at things from a different perspective, or even make depression a bit easier to "manage", so to speak.