Depression isn’t just a type of feeling that people experience from a previous bad week or a rough breakup. It is a highly common mental disorder that affects around 350 million people yearly. College students are often found to experience depression; in fact 1 in 4 adults are found to experience it before the age of 24. Just think, maybe you yourself or one of your fellow classmates have struggled with this already. This disorder is a tricky subject. Most of the time your friends that have had or are going through depression will never show it. That’s how it was for me. It was hard to show people that something was wrong with me because I was able to pull through and act my version of “normal”. Even now it seems hard to explain to people what I was going through.
Change was the hardest thing to deal with.
The smallest bit of change for me made me feel like my world was crashing down. Depression made me feel like I was losing control of everything and each little change only confirmed that for me.
There was no such thing as a simple/clear thought.
My head was a confused and tense mess. Nothing was ever presented clearly to me, and I struggled with understanding my own thoughts. It’s like when you lay down to go to sleep but a bunch of thoughts rush into your head. All you want is peace, but that doesn’t come easy.
The lack of sleep.
I live to sleep; it’s my favorite hobby. I know I’m not alone when I say that sleeping fixes a lot of my problems. However, when struggling with depression sleep becomes the ultimate fight. You ache for it but it rarely ever comes. Instead you’re lying in bed with those crazy thoughts just waiting for the morning to come.
The lack of appetite.
When going through depression you lose interest in very many things. Not because they bore you, but because you don’t see a point in doing them. I found myself not eating for a few days. My friends would ask me to go get dinner with them or for a late night snack. Food did not interest me in the least, when I did eat, I would end up taking just a few bites of food and then throwing the rest of it away.
You become the type of person you hate.
I consider myself a strong person; emotions don’t come as easily to me as it does for other girls my age. Depression kept me emotionless, but never by my choosing. And the emotions that did consume me were anger and sadness. I would become irrationally angry with my friends or with my parents. I’d stop speaking to people for absolutely no reason and treat them like dirt. My anger ripped my friendships apart. What made it even worse was the fact that I couldn’t make people understand my reasoning behind it because I couldn't even understand it. It made me feeling like a complete animal.
Everyday without a breakdown was an achievement.
Like I stated before I’m not normally an emotional person, and breakdowns weren’t really my style. Apparently, depressed me wanted to have a breakdown everyday. I would come back to my dorm room and just bawl my eyes out when I was alone. Not even because I failed a quiz and had a bad paper, but just from things becoming too much.
You’re not alone in your thoughts.
Most of the time in scary movies there will be a character that has another voice in their head telling them to do something crazy. Depression has those tendencies. I had a voice in my head whenever I was getting ready to go to bed. The voice didn’t tell me to do anything crazy, instead it would just run through my brain telling me things like “no one wants you here”, “you won’t amount to anything good”, Or “everyone talks behind you back about you”. No matter what I did that day there would always be that little reminder in the back of my head.
The struggle with suicide.
Thankfully I never acted on any self harming actions but the thought was always there. If you listen to those little thoughts long enough, they seem very simple. Like driving your car through a ravine and just turning your steering wheel a little to the side and letting your car fall off the edge. Or looking for prescription pills in your parents medicine cabinet when you;re home and taking a handful. It seemed so simple to me.
Everyone's experience is different but what makes us the same is that we have experienced it. College is already a stressful enough with grades and trying to manage a social life without adding on the weight of depression (more like the weight of the world) on your shoulders. My words of wisdom to anyone currently fighting depression is to keep pushing through. Surround yourself with family, friends, or even a pet that show you unconditional love. Things will get better, but not immediately. Just keep in mind that time heals all.
