It's wierd. I had been depressed for several years, starting in about
seventh grade. At the time, I had a total of about
0 friends, maybe 3 people I'd sit with at lunch--it went no farther than that. It really did a number on my
self-esteem, to the point where I had none. Of course, looking back I realize that I had no real friends in
elementary school either, but I honestly can't remember feeling too bad about it, besides crying myself to sleep one night in the beginning of fourth grade in a new school where
everybody hated me (ironically, my parents did me a huge favor and pulled me out after
winter break). So that was 6 years ago.
In eighth grade I wasn't all that depressed, just unsure of myself. For example, I went to the
eighth grade social without a date simply because I figured there was nobody who would want to go with me. This overlapped into the beginning of
freshman year, but by winter break last year I had started making new, stronger friendships at the private school I now attend. I was still depressed because I had no really close friendships, and I was still very unsure of myself. I got decent grades, nothing special, nothing to give myself that extra boost of confidence.
Last summer was somewhat of a relapse. At the beginning, I had tons of fun and grew very close to several of the people who were
my friends at the time. Then, we started drifting away. They didn't call as much, I didn't initiate anything, nothing happened. At this point, I'm friends with one of those people.
At the beginning of sophmore year, I went in extremely depressed. I remember taking
depression tests and scoring up to 96%. I felt that I had no friends, or at least at my school. Then, things seemed to be brightening up. I got a
girlfriend, I started making new friendships with more people, and I had less and less to feel bad about. Of course, my girlfriend eventually dumped me (I don't care about her at all anymore,
stupid whore--shouldn't have
wasted my time with her in the first place). It set me back, though.
Last night, yes,
Christmas Eve, I was sitting home
playing guitar, which I've only recently found skill in, and I began to think why I'm still depressed. I came up with a few reasons--none of my friends ever call me or invite me to do stuff, I'm not very good at guitar, girls don't like me--but I found a reason why each of those shouldn't be depressing. My friends never call me--maybe I should call my friends, instead of leaving it up to them to invite me; I'm not very good at guitar--I only started seriously playing a few weeks ago (up to that had just been screwing around), and I'm making good progress. Girls don't like me...this one stopped me for a second. I began to think "
What do girls typically want?". Well, from my understanding, they want a sensitive (that's me), caring (that's me), confident (uhhh....) guy. So, is being depressed getting me anywhere? Of course not! And not only was depression getting me nowhere, it was taking away from what I already had. One of my better friends even told me "Ya know, talking to you makes people feel uncomfortable when you're so down on yourself".
So that made up my mind for me. I figured out that I have nothing to be depressed about. I decided (almost as
a joke) that I would try to not be depressed anymore. It startled me when I realised that it was working.
What's the moral? If you're depressed take a look around and ask yourself why. Chances are, being depressed is a cause of most of those things, or at least feeling better would solve many of the problems you feel faced with. Unless, of course, they're legitimate depression reasons--as in loss of a loved one, major life affecting incident (war, etc). And unless you have a serious problem, it probably won't be as difficult to get out of as you had thought.
"But wait, what're you going to do now?"
Good question. Well, of course, I still plan on
commiting suicide but that's only because I want to die by my own means, not in
some hospital bed. I'd change my name, but I don't want to lose the xp/articles I've already made on this name. So just be warned, this name no longer applies to me too much.... :)
Note: When I called my
ex-girlfriend a stupid whore, I didn't mean to offend anybody (but her) because she really is stupid and she does
sleep around. Of course, being the
straight edge that I am, I personally didn't sleep with her.
Look back and laugh.
Life is the game that no one wins, so don't worry about things. Do you want to look back and see that you simply worried about a bunch of trivial stuff? Neither did I.
Update 6/29/01: Damn, it didn't work. Still depressed...things are harder to change than I thought. What I thought was just general feelings of sadness and alone turned out to be just the surface...I know this is depression, and not because of any of the tests I take. I know I'm depressed because I haven't been happy in years. I might be amused at times by certain things (like going out with people and having a good time), but that's not being happy. I haven't been happy with my life for as long as I can remember. And before that, I was too young to even comprehend things like depression.
Final update, 8/29/01: Kinda weird how quickly human
emotions can change, huh? I suppose it's part of being a
teenager, with
mood swings. The fact that I'm good at arguing and very
pessimistic towards myself probably has never helped me, I was always able to come up with abundant reasons why I'm a crappy person. But all that stuff about
toughing it out and just trying to be positive is true. You just need to try to find the
good things in life. You just need to look at all the good qualities you have, through an
unbiased eye, even if it isn't yours, and yes,
everybody has good qualities. Life is like
dominos. If one falls down, it's easier to let them all fall than to stop one and then pick up the rest, and if they've all fallen, then it's much easier to leave them all lying their than to pick them up, one by one. But it's
repetition--if you can get the hang of picking one up, it's easy to just associate it with another "domino," or area of your life, and pick that one up. And if you have all your dominos picked up, then you're all set. But don't try to do it all by yourself. I couldn't have done it by myself, even though I had to start out alone. But if you can start with your
social life, trying to get that together, and you get some friends you can trust, then you can hopefully get some help from them.
Drugs can help, but dependancy on them is very bad, so make sure you watch yourself. That's all the general advice I can think of, I offer my assistance towards any possible depressed members of E2 who would like to talk. I'm a good listener, and chances are that I know how you feel. Oh, and another thing, you can expect to have some relapses, such as the one I updated 2 months ago. But don't let it ruin everything, just get a little
perspective. =)