I wake up to an alarm and loathe it enough I consider breaking my phone, a feeling I'm certain most are familiar with. In that moment, beginning my day and living my life seem both impossible and potentially simply not worth it. But the battle with that type of feeling is a long one. It really just doesn't stop. Life doesn't pause whether or not I wish it would. Some days I do a decent job of reminding myself of this. I can't skip class. I can't not turn a paper in. I can't bail on meeting with someone. But, some days I can't wrap my head around any of those things being more important than my need to do... absolutely nothing. It's ridiculous really how often I hurt myself by missing a deadline, skipping a class, or bailing on a friend just to do nothing in lieu of those things. Once I have already missed something, I get anxious about how to fix the situation. I often make things better and decide I'll handle everything more maturely the next time around.
Sometimes I do. And sometimes I just screw everything up as bad as or worse than I did the first time through. Once my dropping of the ball becomes a repeated noticeable behavior to someone, it's hard to salvage myself. It's not like I tell my professors I have depression. That seems like a surefire way to make a pathetic excuse to miss things as often as I want to. I'm fully capable of accomplishing what everyone around me can and more. Succumbing to the fact that depression could be the reason for laying in bed instead of going to a class in which I know attendance is graded, well that's succumbing to depression entirely. That's setting myself up to never go to class again and eventually drop out.
I did wholly succumb to depression the first six months I had it, in my junior year of high school. Luckily, high school classes are pretty mandatory, and sports were a great outlet to keep me ticking. Still, I was miserable and took it upon myself to change. So I made mental loopholes to be happy and avoid accepting my depression. For example, nowadays when I miss a class, I am truly concerned. I don't blatantly lie to a professor, but I do work my way around sounding like a whiny kid who thinks he's too empty to go to class that day. Honestly, I'm the only person I lie to in these situations. I tell myself that the migraine I have that morning must be a symptom of the "extreme illness" I'm fostering at the time, and I believe it. Then, that's what I tell the professor whose class I missed or the friend whose party I decided not to go to.
And I do, actually, get sick a lot. I have contracted a common cold or worse four times in the past five months, and that encompasses both warm and cold seasons. I am a young and healthy guy. In these past five months, I have eaten and slept more healthily than I have my whole college career. Yet here I am, noticing no difference in my amount of illnesses. So I decide I need to get a blood test. I google as much as possible until I decide I've figured out what's wrong with me. My most recent assumption is that I have anemia. Heck, maybe I do, but deep down I know anemia can't account for half of the illnesses and chronic fatigue I feel. I'm more likely to chalk up my health misfortunes to having a terminal illness than I am to chalk it up to my depression. But depression does that. It directly causes fatigue and in many individuals weakens the immune system. But I don't say that to others. I don't even say it to myself. When I google symptoms or when I get a blood test at the clinic, I yearn to hear I have a problem. I want them to tell me I have anemia and it causes all my illnesses so I can assure myself that my denial of depression is totally justified.
It sounds like I really do have a serious denial problem, but I don't think I do. I can't start chalking anything up to depression. That's when it defeats me. As much as I feel defeated when I see a "0/25" grade on a paper, it's nothing compared to the complete and utter lifeless defeat I'd feel after seeing my entire college career go down the drain, and that's what would happen once I gave in to admitting depression is the root of my problems.
The hardest part of this battle is that I don't continuously win. My ongoing fight against depression has been a roller coaster to end all roller coasters. Record-breaking I tell you. When I'm beating the crud right out of depression, life is so good. I ace my tests without needing to study because I showed up to every class. I excel in my jobs and receive praise or promotions. I exercise regularly. I fill my time with productivity and enjoyment.
But it never lasts. It has always taken just that one thing to turn my entire psyche upside down. At one point that one thing was a relationship ending. Then it was being under official investigation for things I didn't do. Next it was getting slapped with a bogus $700 fine (completely unrelated to said investigation). Then came going broke all at once and going to the ER. Next up was getting fired. After each and every one of those events, everything in my life simultaneously spiraled out of control. I stopped going to classes. I stopped turning schoolwork in. I stopped doing fun things with friends. I stopped regularly communicating with family. I stopped working as many shifts at work. Then I get so vastly behind in everything possible that I become overwhelmed constantly by anxiety and find myself scrambling to figure out how to fix things with about a dozen different people and responsibilities.
When I hit those slumps, I find ways to cope that feed the depression. I fill the time I should be spending doing productive things with activities that are as far from positive and productive as the left-wing is from the right-wing these days. The coping methods in the past have included girls, alcohol, and video games, often with more than one of those going on at the same time. Even during such low troughs in life, I never admit depression has anything to do with it. I haven't even consciously acknowledged that I still have it until now. I've been known among my friends for talking about how "I have historically horrible senioritis," and I even make it into a joke when I can. I used to think that talking about how much I could drink was a great way to show how cool I was. For a while I also thought it was cool to brag about whatever situation with girls I had going on, despite the situation more often than not being one that had me focusing on all the wrong things. I just make myself believe I'm normal, and I find other scapegoats to pin my down times on.
Yet something always happens that makes me pick myself back up. Sometimes it's a look at my grades. My turnaround once came from summer break and another time from winter break. When I do turn things around, the cycle starts all over again, one misfortune away from letting myself go.
It has been over eight months since the last time I used one of the aforementioned coping methods to fill the overwhelming hole inside me. I gave up partying. I have a steady, amazing girlfriend. I don't remember the last time I played video games. The fact I abandoned all those awful habits, what seems like forever ago, is great, and it's not like I have been miserable without an outlet for half a year. My life is good, and I know it. For the first time, I have more than a full ride at my university. I don't have to work two jobs anymore. I have a girlfriend of almost half a year who is both a positive influence on me and someone who makes me happier than I could have ever imagined. I am five months from graduating college, foregoing a full year of school. That last part really does mean a lot. School, I suppose, is the cause of my current internal war on depression. I despise three of my five classes mostly just because of realizing they aren't helping me in any way. Not to become more skilled for my career, not to become a better person, nothing. And so goes the struggle I began this article by describing. Luckily, I have a lot going for me to constantly keep me up. It's not like having depression and being happy are mutually exclusive. It's perfectly possible to do both at once, and I'm doing both right now. I fully expect winter break to set me up for a happy and smooth-running final semester of college. For now, just like anyone else, I'll keep grinding, day by day.
