Dear Depression:
You suck. Everyone knows this. Everyone knows you’re the worst, but a lot of people don't want to talk about you. Whenever I did try to talk to someone about you, you made me feel like I shouldn’t. You made me feel terrible for trying to express myself. You convinced me I was annoying my friends and family, even when I should have known they loved me and wanted to help.
I wrote poems about you instead of talking. It was one solution to the problems you were causing. If I personified you, I could fight you, pen and paper my weapon. I could pound the keys of my keyboard like I wanted to punch you in your face. I was young when you first got a hold on me, and didn’t know what else to do.
You’ve messed up a lot of things for me. You’re the reason I barely scraped by my first semester of college. I was letting you win when I should have been fighting. That first semester taught me, though, more than you were bringing me down. My failures pushed me to try and get my things in order. I transferred schools and did better. I passed all my classes and created beautiful poems.
That isn’t to say it was easy. There were days my motivation went from 100 percent down to 0 percent. I’m lucky that I had (and still do have) a great support system. My boyfriend worked with me, and we got homework done together. I have a mother that understands the gravity of my situation and encourages me to do better. Depression, when you made it hard, they helped make it better.
It’s okay, though. I’m no longer letting you win. It took years and years, but I’ve found things that work. I’m on Zoloft now, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. I was nervous to start medication, as previous attempts hadn’t worked. I was beginning to think that it just wasn’t the solution for me. Meds don’t work for everyone, and maybe I’m one of those people. In the end, Zoloft helped build the wall between me and you. You and I are not living together anymore, even if the marks of what you did to me still remain. And while Zoloft has been a good friend to me, it isn’t perfect. Sometimes you still manage to climb over the wall and give me bad days just like everyone else.
You know, it used to blow my mind that there are people out there that only have a few bad days. They don’t feel like every single day is a bad one. I still can’t comprehend it sometimes. There are those in this world that don’t feel like hurting themselves. People that don’t want to die and don’t feel anxious over things as simple as saying hello and answering the phone. They go on with their lives and don’t feel devastated when the slightest thing goes wrong.
I was never that person. I’m still not, but I’m working my way towards it. The various scars on my body do not make me feel ashamed, even if they do make me feel sad sometimes. I’m covering them all in tattoos, anyway. You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do, after all!
Everyone copes differently, and I hope anyone else struggling with you does it in a better way. I hope they write their negative feelings on a ceramic plate and smash them to pieces (trust me, this is incredibly satisfying). I hope they make a happy box, stuffed full with a good book, an adorable stuffed animal, good smelling lotions, and a favorite song. Like me, maybe they’ll make a jar full of glitter to swirl around and watch when they feel anxious and need calm.
You aren’t cute, Depression, and the solutions to you aren’t always, either. While reading a good book and holding a favorite stuffed animal can help sometimes, it isn’t always enough. It’s likely that the person you're harassing has an incredibly messy room and they just can’t bring themselves to fix it. Depression, you’ve caused dishes to build up and meals to be forgotten. Those afflicted by you know it’ll be okay, but still feel awful. They go through the motions of life even when it hurts because one can’t exactly skip school or call into work for being depressed. Sometimes, the biggest accomplishment of the day for us will be getting out of bed or eating a full meal. Maybe we’ll put away some of the clothes laying on our floors. All of these are major accomplishments for a person who is hurting. We really should have parties for these kinds of things.
Ideally, Depression, you would never haunt another person ever again. I know this isn’t possible, but what I can do is help everyone I know who is fighting you. I can talk about my experiences and hope that somehow they help someone else out there who feels lost. I hope that one day I’ll be completely rid of you, or at least able to keep you on a leash.
With no love at all,
Savannah