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What it's like, being depressed
Aug. 1st, 1998 10:21 pmIt's hard being a depressed Christian because it means you're doubly a failure, first as a person and then as a believer. You think that if your faith were stronger you wouldn't feel like this, you'd be able to shake it off, the prayers would be answered immediately and in your favour. You wonder why it doesn't work.
You feel like a failure as a person because everyone else manages to cope. You feel alone and isolated, and withdrawn. Little things frustrate you till you're crying or angry over the tiniest things, and then you feel guilty for being upset or yelling at [children/pets/husband/friends/family]... and then you feel worse because now you feel guilty as well as upset/angry.
People tell you to just snap out of it, or expect their prayers to have an immediate effect, and when it doesn't work you just feel worse because it doesn't work therefore you're really broken.
Little decisions are time-consuming and take so much energy that you can't manage to make them, so you end up living in your PJs and not showering because choosing clothes or deciding whether to have a bath or shower takes too much effort. Washing hair is too much trouble. Eating requires cooking so you don't do that, and you don't eat premade food because you still need to decide what to eat.
So you don't eat for a few days till someone forcibly hands you food and says eat. You can't concentrate enough to even follow soaps on TV or read a book, so you end up just sitting and thinking, which makes it worse and pushes you farther down. The radio annoys you, so you listen to one or two CDs repeatedly. You know it's bad when even NIN is too upbeat.
You feel like a failure as a person because everyone else manages to cope. You feel alone and isolated, and withdrawn. Little things frustrate you till you're crying or angry over the tiniest things, and then you feel guilty for being upset or yelling at [children/pets/husband/friends/family]... and then you feel worse because now you feel guilty as well as upset/angry.
People tell you to just snap out of it, or expect their prayers to have an immediate effect, and when it doesn't work you just feel worse because it doesn't work therefore you're really broken.
Little decisions are time-consuming and take so much energy that you can't manage to make them, so you end up living in your PJs and not showering because choosing clothes or deciding whether to have a bath or shower takes too much effort. Washing hair is too much trouble. Eating requires cooking so you don't do that, and you don't eat premade food because you still need to decide what to eat.
So you don't eat for a few days till someone forcibly hands you food and says eat. You can't concentrate enough to even follow soaps on TV or read a book, so you end up just sitting and thinking, which makes it worse and pushes you farther down. The radio annoys you, so you listen to one or two CDs repeatedly. You know it's bad when even NIN is too upbeat.
