A Rough Week

I had a plan. An interesting discussion I wanted to start with anyone who might stumble upon my blog and, hopefully, soon to be regular readers. However, as sometimes happens with my brain, the past week got a bit derailed, and nothing quite went according to plan. By Sunday, I was struggling somewhere between complete devastation, fighting hysterical tears and a strange hybrid of abstract, yet somewhat rational, inexplicable anger.

Stop here and take a second out of your day---as though you weren't already---but try to get in my head for a minute here. Imagine the best day you can think of in your entire life thus far. Remember how you felt in that day, physically and emotionally, whatever it was. Proud, invincible, accomplished, worthy, strong...remember all of those feelings and soak them in for a minute.

Now, imagine the worst day you have ever had. I am talking the absolute lowest of the low; the point at which you were more miserable than you have ever been. And do the same thing, remember all the associated feelings, physical and emotional, that were associated with that day. Now soak those in for a moment.

To begin to understand this ridiculous, shattered thing I manage to call a life, you have to imagine that for some reason your brain magnified all of those emotions ten-fold, and that every day you woke up to one or both of those two options. There is not really any shade of grey. When you roll out of bed you are either the best you could ever possibly feel or the worst you can possibly imagine. To top that off, it can change with no warning---instantly or over time (an hour, a week, a month). For me, I never know how I will wake up, and I rarely stay in one mood for an entire day.

Now that you have a sort of understanding of the extreme range of emotions I am talking about, let me continue:

As I said, Two versions of me exist: the energetic, life-loving, speed demon, no one can stop me, I am confident and happy with my decisions, life is awesome me or crushing sadness and exhaustion, every part of me is physically in pain, self-deprecating, devaluing my every choice, inevitable failure, please let me wreck my car so life has to come to a screeching halt so I can catch up me.

Mind you, these two versions of me are not exactly friendly neighbors either. They loathe each other. Each hates the other. When manic, I tend to hate myself for being impulsive, envy myself for being able to sleep when I'm not manic. When depressed, I not only hate myself for being depressed, making choices that I have made (and know have made me happy), not being as successful or perfect as I thought I should be at 26, but also I hate other people for being happy.

So that's where I have been this past week. Primarily as the angry, hateful version of me---and she doesn't write a lot, but has a lot of ideas (which have been noted and will be fully explored at a later, more upbeat date :-P) . As I fumbled through my week, I had an encounter with someone who, albeit intoxicated and perhaps not to blame, said something to me that was very upsetting. Sadly, they were not the first to say this to me either; the first person to say it wasn't intoxicated either, so I'm not sure what her excuse was. Both of these people said, almost verbatim, "What are you depressed about? You have no reason to be depressed or suicidal. Your life could be so much worse."

I will never claim that I am not aware, even in my current state of crushing but functioning depression, that my life could not possibly be worse--it could. I could have been abused as a child. I could be addicted to drugs. I could have cancer. And so on and so forth. Yes, my life could be worse. I know this; even in my worst moments, when I want to be dead, I know that other people's lives are harder than mine and, perhaps, more worthy of misery (although no one deserves misery.)

What hurt me though is that these individuals felt like it was their place to judge my internal struggle, but even more so that they misunderstand mental illness in such a dire manner. Far too many people have no idea that depression/bipolar is not something I chose and not something I have any power to control. It is not just a phase, being upset, or anything that I can even define most days. I go to therapy. I take my meds exactly like I am told to. I do everything right. I always have---I've done everything "right" in fact, but here I stand...broken. Believe me, if I had any choice in the matter at all, I would not choose this for my absolute worst enemy.

More often than not, I do not know why I am depressed nor why I am so happy. The alternative to this is that there are so many things in my head that I can't even define one thing making me feel so awful or so amazing. I do not need a reason though. The reason I am depressed is because I (likely) have a genetic predisposition to a disease that affects the balance of chemicals in my brain. The imbalance of these chemicals causes my moods to shift from one extreme to another for NO REASON other than biology.

I write all this to pose a question: is part of the stigma associate with mental illness (particularly depression, bipolar, suicide attempts/thoughts) in the public due to such a ghastly misunderstanding of what these diseases are? Is the general public so misinformed as to think that you MUST have a reason that you can pinpoint to be depressed? More importantly, how do we raise awareness about this as something that we cannot control, but are not any less able adults than anyone else?

And for the record: it is never anyone's place to assume that we know enough about another person to know whether or not they are suffering nor what they might be suffering from. It is likely that even the person you are closest to suffers to some degree for some reason. To come up to someone whose story you have not even tried to begin to know or understand and tell them "You have no reason to be depressed"---well, as Meghan Trainor says in a song I heard the other day---"consider this an invitation and kiss my ass goodbye!"