Who cares if one more light goes out?
In a sky of a million stars
It flickers, flickers
Who cares when someone's time runs out?
If a moment is all we are
We're quicker, quicker
Who cares if one more light goes out?
Well I do
One More Light - Linkin Park
Hey brothers and sisters. Tonight I am going to talk to you about the dreaded topic of depression. As always, I come to you not as an expert but as someone who continually faces and overcomes the struggles he speaks about. Have I struggled with depression? Of course. Have I conquered it once and for all, no. My aim in writing to you is to show you how I view depression and how I fight it whenever it comes upon me. I hope you enjoy the read.
Should've stayed, were there signs, I ignored?
Can I help you, not to hurt, anymore?
First of all, depression in my view is not a mental illness as some claim it is. It is a part of our lives which we ordinarily do not wish to see. How do I mean? A coin has two sides. Day and night are part of the same cycle. The night may indeed be dark and there may be many terrors but without the night, day loses meaning, it loses value. King Solomon once said, "Sorrow is better than laughter, for sadness has a refining influence on us." To be clear, sorrow is not depression but it often leads to it.
I would like to debunk the myth of depressed people being "mentally ill", to me this is a false innuendo especially employed in situations where a mentally deranged person performs an outrageous act such as a mass shooting. In such cases, when people have trouble understanding why certain people, hitherto unsuspected of being capable of performing such heinous acts, end up perpetrating them; the use of the phrase is employed. You see what I mean? There is a great misuse of the term, "mentally ill" and the trouble is, it leads to ostracism for those who are actually depressed, therefore making such people unlikely to ever report or share their struggle with depression with the people who can actually help.
And you're angry, and you should be, it's not fair
Just 'cause you can't see it, doesn't mean it, isn't there
To what can I best compare depression? Depression, is best explained with an anecdote from the famous Sci-Fi series, The Walking Dead. In the TV show, people suddenly become zombies after they are bitten by other zombies and start attacking normal, healthy human beings. It was not until much later in the series when the cast finds out that people did not just become zombies because they were bitten by zombies, rather, everyone was infected by a particular disease and if they died, they would turn into zombies. This is the same way I view depression, or as some scholars would call it, clinical depression. We all have the seeds of depression within us. We all fall prey to it sometimes, whether we show it or not.
As I see it, when depression occurs one often feels sapped of energy, spent, without choice, trapped by circumstance, as if no further help is possible. These feelings are often as a result of the individual having felt frustrated and sad, sometimes due to feelings of loss or abandonment. Women generally handle depression better than men, as they tend to share their problems more. Men on the other hand believe themselves to be the masters of their own destinies. They take the bull by the horns and face it squarely. If a man fails critically at a task he feels is personal to him, he will not share with anyone else. He will turn the problem over in his mind looking for a solution until one is found or until he has no choice but to admit defeat.
This is the most crucial step. In this particular case, if a man faces a problem that he cannot solve and for which he feels he cannot seek help, then only two choices are really available to him, to distract himself until he finds a solution to the problem or depression. It is a mark of pride for a man to fix a problem all by himself and not to complain about it. This is why often men will not let other people know that they are facing something.
Women on the other hand can sometimes get depressed when they experience the same feelings of entrapment. Such is the case when a highly educated and so-called "empowered" woman is battered by her husband. Usually such women feel embarrassed to admit it and wish for their peers not to know. Sometimes such women are brave enough to speak up about the issue but cannot leave because they fear that their children will be abused physically as well. Especially in the case where the man is a high profile figure, for example a senior police officer.
There are many cases that lead to depression, job loss, cancer, sickness, rape, domestic abuse, constant failure, under appreciation and emotional abuse. The list goes on and on, time and a lack of infinite knowledge on the subject matter bar me from listing all the possible causes of depression. I've been through some of the above, so how did I overcome it?
There is no one size fits all approach to overcoming depression, but here is what I find that works for me:
- Friends - I am a man, I don't talk about most of my problems. Sometimes, I get sad, really sad and the world moves on without me. However, when my friends are around me, we can talk about completely unrelated subjects that can distract even from a while from the darkness inside
Hello darkness my old friend, I've come to talk with you again...
- Darkness - Sounds controversial right? Depression management experts often say that when feeling depressed, resist the desire to isolate yourself. Well I don't disagree entirely, but I believe you need some time to be completely alone with your thoughts, no matter how dark they are. In the darkness, I isolate myself not just from people, but from objects. I stay away from my phone, my tools, the only thing I sometimes stay near is the bed, so that I can sit on the floor and lean on the bed. Being alone with my thoughts helps. I believe in the "Phoenix mentality" (yeah I totally invented that one). Some call it the "bounce back mentality" but I prefer to call it the Phoenix mentality because I allow myself to feel worse and to have darker thoughts till I break down and then I find my strength in the darkness and I do not leave the darkness until I have a morsel of strength.
When words fail, music speaks...
- Music - As with the case above, I allow myself first to listen to sad or angry music, the music that expresses exactly what I am feeling, what I can't put into words. I like using YouTube for this as it allows me to search for the songs I like easily and quickly, but also because in time it learns what mood I am in and begins to recommend similar songs. In time, I no longer need to select the music, the songs it auto-selects for me end up cheering me up. This is not because YouTube plays the music I love or need to hear, but rather that, by maintaining a certain rhythm or tempo, my mind finds a way to deal with the situation.
I want you to know that there won't always be a light at the end of tunnel and sometimes you will simply not know what to do, or you will just want to end it all. I want to encourage you, the universe is not yet done with you. Godspeed.
Who cares if one more light goes out?
Well I do
As a token of my appreciation for having followed me through this long and arduous article, please find below a link to the playlist I was listening to while writing this article.
I made the playlist as I was writing this article so it only has 15 songs. Once again, enjoy!
