I remember, way back, when I started to slowly understand what the fuck was wrong with me. The days of not wanting to leave my room, let alone my bed, were ones I had been familiar with forever, but was too young to know it was anything more than just the hormones of growing up. It wasn’t until towards the end of college, after having spent close to a decade bouncing from pill to pill, from therapist to therapist, to acupuncture to weird Jesus fairies my mom thought would for sure help me, that I really began to understand what depression was. I wasn’t weird, sad, or a bad kid. I was clinically depressed, and no pill or book was going to cure me. That said, I had the hardest time with the following: 1) Accepting that this would never go away and 2) Explaining to people around me what was wrong. The acceptance part – I’m still working on. And I’m sure I’ll circle back to it at another time.
The explanation part was a bitch. Kinda still is. I was constantly being explained that my life was perfect and I had nothing to be depressed about – that I was smart, pretty, and my family loved me. I was told I’d get over it, that I had no reason to cry, that I’d snap out of it, that I was overreacting, and worst of all, that I was doing it to myself. It took everything in me not to beat the shit out of my family, particularly my dad, all my friends, and anyone who ever had anything to say to me about it. Luckily, at this point, I’ve maintained steady relationships – people who have grasped the concept over the years because they didn’t have much else of a choice if they wanted to stick around, which I’m more grateful for than words could ever express. But there’s still times that I have to hold back more than just my comments when someone who doesn’t quite get it, tells me to suck it up.
The article below isn’t one I wrote or made any contributions to, but it’s one of the best (and simplest) I’ve seen that lists just a handful of things that would be great if “normal” people could at least try to understand.