The Loud Mind Of A Quiet Person

Chapter XII-Depression, Trauma and Healing

Depression

    Talking about depression is very complicated and difficult because of its complexity and its emotional usage. Fortunately, I am feeling better so my descriptions won't be about the present moment. I will take a trip down to the memory lane though to remember how it was and how it felt. It is all stored somewhere in my brain. Like I did with all the mental health problems so far, I will make some clarifications about depression too. Some people who have not experience depression might just see it as sadness. We wished it was as simple as this. We know life has ups and downs and some downs at some point of our lives are perfectly normal. Depression feels like there are no ups and only downs are present. It is a miserable general mood. It makes you feel powerless, hopeless, worthless, scared, isolated, overwhelmed by everything, negative, angry, and the list goes on. All these negative emotions happen at the same time. It just feels like you do not have control over life anymore. Before the age of 19, I did not know what a mental breakdown was. I just had some angry fits which ended with me kicking something solid with my foot then regretting it. Unfortunately, I discovered them later. Mental breakdowns are just awful. All the negative feelings become too much and you hit a dark rock bottom. You cry, but it is not a usual episode of crying. We can cry because of sadness, because of emotions (like when you watch a movie) or because of joy. This breakdown crying is a sadness one, of course, but there is more to it. You cry out of hopelessness. It is not just a about a specific situation that made you sad enough to cry. You cry because of the general sadness that you cannot take anymore.

Life does not stop until you have a better mental health. We still need to do things like going to work, to school or to talk to people. Somehow we find the strength to do all these stuff but it is like our body is there and the mind is busy trying to solve your aching problems. With time, you lose that strength, the strength that you used to keep the appearances and function like a normal person. If you begin to stop caring about yourself, it is impossible to care for your job. I remember going to my first job last summer and spending eight hours there saying just hello and goodbye. Sometimes my team support asked me if everything is all right. Of course, it was not. But you cannot just vent about depression at work. I could not do it to anybody anyway for like twelve months. I was in huge pain and only I knew it. I had the luck to be able to do my job even though I was not myself. I was doing personal identifications through video calls, I was polite and that was it. I had no power to smile to strangers. Of course, the sorrow mental state I was in made me lose my focus so I was more likely to make mistakes. Somehow, the worse my mood got, the more I worked. If I think about it know, I suppose it was a defensive mechanism to keep my mind busy. I took my break, got in small room alone and listen to music, the only thing that could ease my pain. I got very emotional about the songs and how relatable it was for my mood, I felt my eyes got wet and heavy but I had to quit my break and enter the video calls like nothing happened.

At school I was a shadow too, in the fortunate days that I was able mentally to go to it. I was hoping from the bottom of my heart to not be asked any question. I tried to pay attention as much as I could to the lessons, and I had an answer prepared for every question addressed before to my colleagues. But I did not want to speak at all .I did not want to fail my exams either. I was in a lose-lose situation. If I passed my exams, I would be frustrated because my depression did not allow me to feel any joy and if I failed...more self-hatred and problems would come. I was in this situation about everything in my life, not just exams. These episodes described at work at school become a norm. Charlie Chaplin said that a day without laughter is a day wasted. When you are depressed, you lose a lot of days because you cannot even smile, never mind laughing.

Panic attacks are for me even worse than breakdowns. I imagine for every person panic attacks represent something slightly different. For me, panic attacks where those moments when my heart physically hurt so much I thought it would just fail. I was scared to sleep because I was afraid not to wake up in the morning, as if I was not terrified enough already by the thought of dying. Sometimes my chest hurt so badly that when I was walking down the street it made me stop in place for a few seconds. Not only I had my mental health in shambles, but I had problems with my heart too. I felt so relieved when I had my heart checked at a doctor before being employed and it was all fine. I promised myself from that moment to take better care of myself. I had neglected my health too much.