For over a year now, I've been living with depression. I'm not officially diagnosed with depression, but the one therapist I've seen told me that I was. The one therapist I've seen has also told me that I've become less depressed after my short time seeing her. Which is great, but I've never really been honest with myself and come to terms with it. I'm depressed. And, I'm happy to admit it now.
After my first session of therapy, I think I called or texted my boyfriend and cried-complained to him that I can't go to therapy as a psychology major. I felt that if I wanted to help people with their issues, then I needed to not have any issues. At the time, I did not see the bright side in being a psychology major and going to therapy. My boyfriend had to tell me about it.
As of now, before the publication of this article, only one family member knows that I am battling with depression-- my mother. And, after she found out the reason why I am depressed, so much of my life has been put into perspective for her. She now has more of an understanding of the way I react to things, why I have panic attacks to trivial things like being overdressed for a party, and why I sometimes can't get out of bed. Because my mother is such an amazing person and lives her life with extreme empathy, she does what she can to help me become the person I was before I became depressed. One of the biggest things that my mom has helped me with, is trying to figure out the right time to tell my friends and family that I am depressed and the reason why. The two biggest people that I am having trouble finding the words to tell are my best friends, whom I'm just going to call L and T.
I currently feel stagnant in my life and I think that a way to help this is to address some of the problems which may or may not be the reason why I feel this way. My depression is one of the biggest. What I have learned about depression is that it affects people differently and those anti-depressant commercials are such dramatizations they're ridiculous. Granted, I've come across people that are chronically depressed, to where their outlook on life is completely horrible. But how I live my life as someone is depressed isn't with a negative outlook on life. I love my life. But there are times when it's hard for me to really connect with my friends or want to be socially active. Some days, I just want to lay in bed and watch Netflix and sit in a Discord voice channel. There are other times when I have extreme cabin fever and I want to go out and connect with people. My mood goes up and does and changes quickly, but I am happy. I am ready to see where fate takes me.
I don't really have a conclusion for this article. I tried to write many different ones all hitting different topics but they don't work. I guess the last two things I want to say are this: if you do have depression, you're sure as heck not alone. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being depressed. I also want to say that you shouldn't let your depression define you and take over your life. Your head may get in the way of things but people see you as many different things before they see you as depressed. Hell, some people may not even think that. Depression doesn't define you, you define it.
