Depression and Anxiety

Last year this month, I reflected on the periods of depression I’ve experienced in my life. These periods have happened after the passing of loved ones, because of past trauma and sometimes I don’t even know the reasons why. 

Today as I look back, I see those moments not so much as times of depression as a label, but as times of pain. I say that because I feel like there are different connotations of those words in our world and society at present time. People take the word pain more seriously than anything mental health related. I know this because I still don’t take mental health as seriously as I do any physical pain and it’s a process. But the mind and the body should be treated as one and the same. They are two bodies that make up a whole. 

Depression is pain. Most of the time, for me, I feel like its what happens when I choose to repress my emotions and “try to be happy, no matter what happens.” This mentality is what causes people to live in a sort of artificial world with artificial connections and emotions. With this, we lie to ourselves and each other about our current situation and stop ourselves completely from truly living. In lots of ways, we dam ourselves from becoming more than who we are at this present time and healing. 

To me, truly living is embracing all the pain, the joy and the in between. It is being completely honest with yourself and getting the help that you need when you need it. 

To be honest, for a while now, I haven’t truly been living. I have been repressing all the strong and painful emotions that have come with the life I have chosen for myself. I have glossed over those emotions with a busy and successful looking life. On the surface, I look strong, refined and beautiful. But within my mind, there’s a heavy river that I have chosen to dam up. The pressure build up is a headache of self destruction. 

I never really thought that I have had anxiety as much as my struggle with depression, but lately I have seen that they come hand in hand. It can be so crippling at times and also very dark. I’ve had days where I feel like there’s no way up and out of the darkness in my mind. There is a hopelessness within that darkness that is hard to navigate. It’s a numbness that you don’t know unless you’ve felt it for yourself. Thats the depression part. 

As for the anxiety, this is more of a new one for me as I have felt it increase in my life lately. Increased heart rate and blood pressure, pacing back and forth in not knowing what to do with the new found energy increase, the body in constant motion in mind and body, the frustration that comes in wanting it all to stop and feeling like it can’t, then there’s the anger when you can’t make it stop, and then finally there’s the release of energy or the calming of the senses and then a sadness in a loss of energy and control. The release of energy or the feeling that you need to put the energy somewhere usually causes me to either to physically exert myself in an extreme way or punch or throw something. This is how I have experienced it. 

I am aware of how messy and painful this all is. I am aware of the effects of trauma and its realities. I am aware of the craftiness of the wandering mind. I am aware of how it feels when your mind creeps to thoughts of giving up or making all the pain go away. 

I am also aware of the miracle of people. The miracle of finding people who love you for exactly who and where you are. The miracle of true friendship and loyalty especially when they know the worst parts of you. The miracle of time and our internal processes.The miracle of friends who understand those feelings because they have felt them. The miracle and healing power of gratitude. The miracle of empathy. We cannot reach that healing empathy without openness or the sharing of our experiences.   

With these words, I hope somehow someone out there feels validated by my experience and chooses to keep going, to keep living and to hold on. Pain is just a part of life, but it isn’t life. Life is embracing the pain and taking care of it. 

Life is the all-encompassing portraiture of our whole experience.