smileytraveler

Dublin, Ireland

“Clinical depression” is an odd state of affairs. Not sure I believe it's a real medical diagnosis, but it's absolutely a real thing.

A bad thing?

It depends on what you are trying to accomplish with life. For example, I've never met or heard of a genius artist who wasn't at least a little batshit. Masterpieces aren't created by those fat, happy, content, and simple.

What if you don't want to live and don't want to die?

Yes, depression feels like shit, but in my case it's a very particular kind of shit. Always has been. I first figured out the exact feeling in high school:

Imagine being in a very long, narrow, windowless hallway. You're in the middle and you want out. There's a door at the end so you run toward it. In front of the door there's a thug with a machine gun who will shoot you if you try to escape. You turn and run to the opposite end. Another door, another thug who will shoot. The hallway is life. The thugs are death. Both choices suck but you persist in running from end to end because that's called “living” and there's no way to stop.

The only option, then, is drugs. They're called anti-depressants and are quite aptly named.

They work. But they literally produce “anti-depression”. Not happiness. Not contentment. Not vigor for life.

They make being in that hallway a neutral affair. Not good, not terrible. It's an emotional neutrality that's extremely hard to describe, although I've heard a lot of people describe it as “numbness”.

I stopped crying every day for no reason, so I got that going for me. However, I was incapable of crying at all. I could not do it. Watched tear-jerker movies and realized I should be crying and would will myself to do it. Not a tear could I muster.

It's an odd feeling...anti-depression.