Stop Romanticizing Depression
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Health and Wellness

Stop Romanticizing Depression

Fall in love with yourself instead

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Stop Romanticizing Depression
Psych2GO

Depression isn’t beautiful and mysterious. It doesn’t solely spark creation and provide a soul with a new perspective and a deeper understanding of life.

Depression isn’t meant to be romanticized.

Depression is sleeping all day, forgetting to eat because you’re so consumed with sadness. Depression is coming home to the security of your bed until you forget your sheets are weeks old and you can’t remember the last time you made your bed. You hastily pull off your clothes and carelessly leave them to decorate your floor. You do this day in and day out until there are piles of dirty clothes and you can’t remember what color your rug is. There are full glasses of water everywhere because you know you need to stay hydrated but by the time you bring it back to your safe place, your bedroom, you’re too exhausted to even drink and you forget why you thought of doing anything to help yourself in the first place. Depression is crawling back into bed without showering even though it’s one of the things you hate the most and it makes you feel disgusting. It’s crying for hours although you can’t seem to figure out why, ripping everything off your bedroom walls because pictures and posters of good experiences don’t motivate you, they make you feel more alone. Depression is staying up all night even when you’re exhausted in an attempt to avoid nightmares, only to find yourself wide awake at 5 am and more nauseous and fatigued than you ever imagined you could be. Depression is not having the energy to pet your dog anymore, to find it exhausting to hold a conversation, even with the people you live with. Depression is questioning why your boyfriend would stay with someone as despondent and wretched as you. Depression is looking at the instruments you own and trying to visualize how satisfying it once was to enjoy playing them. It’s staring at your textbooks and knowing that with every hour wasted and each day that goes by you could’ve completed a homework assignment, an essay, and being completely desensitized to the fact that it means you might fail for the third semester in a row. It’s arguing with your closest friends when all you really needed was for someone to hold you. Depression hollows you out, like termites in a tree, you become a shell of the person you once were.

One of the worst ideas that this generation has cultivated is by far the infatuation with mental illness. People are enamored of depression. According to a CBS News article I found earlier this week, “more millennials reported they had depression (19%) compared to 14% of adults between 34 and 47 -- from "Generation X" -- and 12% of adults between 48 to 66 -- "Baby Boomers" -- in addition to 11% of seniors 67 and older.”

The dance with depression is all too familiar to me and I am certainly not saying it is easy to walk away from. But I believe that, like any song, it eventually ends and you do not need to leave it on repeat.

I hope you don’t take this as me being ignorant and insensitive because my intention is the exact opposite. I am not a psychologist (yet) but for right now I speak from my heart, from the experiences and mental instability that has shaped me and the people closest to me.

I spent months with my face buried in John Green books and I read way too much into Mayday Parade lyrics, praying a beautiful boy was going to come along and heal my soul. It doesn’t work that way. The fact of the matter is, you are both as strong and as weak as you allow yourself to be. Terrifying, isn’t it? You would think that being aware of the control you have over your own life would be comforting and empowering, but not in this case. Half of the time I was angry with the external factors in my life that led me down this dreary path. For the life of me I couldn’t understand why I was dealt such a shitty hand and it seemed like every other person on Earth was leaps and bounds ahead of me in life. I spent the rest of my time beating myself up over how much Depression had consumed me. I lived in it, nurtured it and allowed it to grow. Not only did I hate myself for letting it consume me, it became a comfortable state for me to live in. I had faint memories of how happy I once was before I settled down in my shallow pool of self-pity with a dark cloud over my existence and refused to get up and help myself. You’d be surprised how much energy you waste feeling sorry for yourself; I was exhausted all the time.

With the little energy I had left, I fell in love with a boy that was just as sad as I was and I gave him everything. Stop it right now if you just thought to yourself, “Awwww, how romantic.”

It wasn’t.

At first it felt comfortable and safe because we both understood the other, but depression breeds depression, and you shouldn’t take on the task of fixing someone else if you are neglecting your own mental health in the process. In hindsight, the relationship took a really big toll on my mental stability and self-esteem in so many ways. I was vulnerable, desperate, and selfish all at the same time. The selfish part was bred from the pool of self pity I mentioned earlier. I had an excuse for everything, from the poor decisions I made to the constant rationalizing that I should stay miserable. “Learned Helplessness” was the Psychological term I learned much later on that described exactly that. I also eventually realized that being so desperate and vulnerable made me compromise my morals in so many ways.

The takeaway from all of this is, I believe those who struggle with Depression can grow out of it. That doesn’t mean you can’t grow from it too. The best advice I have ever received was very simple, “Turn the page.”

Do not wallow in Depression, never fall in love with melancholia, don’t date someone just to try and save them and do not think you need to be fixed like a broken toy.

You have to surround yourself with positivity.

Loving yourself should be your first romance.

"Turn your face to the sun and the shadows will fall behind you." ~ Maori Proverb

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This article has not been reviewed by Odyssey HQ and solely reflects the ideas and opinions of the creator.
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