IT’LL ALL BE OKAY
Trigger Warning: mental health
What do I do when I’m sad? Great question! (No one asked me this. I just get sad and then I inevitably ask myself “what do?”)
SO! What does Schmooples do when she’s sad??
Honestly, I thought about listing all the things that have helped me in the past, but I’m not a wellness guru…Nothing really works as consistently as time. I pretty much try to preoccupy myself with things until the constant pit of anxiety and dread in my stomach goes away. But sometimes I’m so depressed that I’m just a limp noodle on the bed doing literally nothing. I just want to sleep it away. I don’t feel any joy watching anything, gaming, reading, or engaging with any of my craftier hobbies. One of the things that’s given me the most joy is movement - dance - and even then, at my lowest, it feels like I’m a C-3PO but with even less soul. I’m just shuffling my feet and forcing myself to perform the moves. So yeah, sometimes I feel pure, undiluted anhedonia.
me noodling
I’m conscious, but not really alive. Present, but not really there. My mind and body shut down, and the monotony of the days meld together at a tormenting snail’s pace. I’m laden with listlessness - I wish that I’d want to do anything. Even when things like dance does cleanse some of the sad-person muck, that grime is just omnipresent, weighing you down staining you. Depression feels like a force of gravity, a constant wet blanket, an insidious leech that sucks the vibrance out of the world. It’s a lassitude that leaves you with nothing more than a dull apathy and a physical husk. It’s often conflated with anxiety or sadness, but it’s more basal than that; when you have it, it runs more like an undercurrent beneath those emotions, one that tints every one of your senses with a drab gray. Depression doesn’t feel like a feeling so much as a force - and it’s an ineffable one that’s only shared by others who’ve drowned in that same well. In other words, when you know, you know. And when you know, well…you know that it’s something that contradicts every good aspect of life itself.
I don’t mean to kill your vibe by painting a sordid image of depression, and I could probably wax poetic about it all day because it’s ironically soOooOOOooOOOO ‘feeling-y’, but I’ll quit it with the lamentations. Bottom line, sometimes nothing but time lifts that hazy, dumb-dumb depressive veil.
On a personal note, that passage of time can present further anxieties about how I’m just wasting time and thus exacerbate aspects of my depression. 🙄 It’s funny how the things that can alleviate depression can also worsen it. I remember the first time I took antidepressants. I snoozed like a goddamn baby and the lows felt less low (the highs also felt less high), but I actually ultimately felt better in general. The caveat, however, was that the efficacy of it was existentially disturbing to me at the same because it really made me feel that I was just a floppy bag of chemicals that could simply be fixed by the appropriate cocktail of drugs. And that made me feel a bit hopeless in that it made me feel like there was just something intrinsically wrong with me; that there was something wrong with my physical, genetic wiring, that I was just a mechanical concoction of sad-girl chemicals that could only be corrected by an equally mechanical concoction of happy-girl chemicals. And at the time, I was like, is that really it? Am I just a wacky wavy inflatable tube guy subject to the chemical gusts of my body? I’m just underperforming hardware? An animatron? Is that what we ALL are? And how is a thought like that not depressing?
jargon jargon jargon
Despite my depression, I still want to hold hope that there’s more to us than just our bodies of meat. I’m more than just a chemical slurry in a meatbag! I WANT TO BELIEEEVE! I want to believe in a soul! That…that there’s perhaps intrinsic meaning in life. That there’s meaning in what I experience.
totally normal thing to say
Nothing is forever, but I want to believe that we have a greater purpose despite our transience. But maybe I should take solace in the thought that we just don’t matter. That it wouldn’t last. That nothing matters. And that’s okay. I should take life for what it is, and enjoy what comes when I can.
Either way, I’ll eventually be okay, and you will too. Ultimately it doesn’t actually matter if there is or isn’t intrinsic meaning to life - everything we feel and do and live will all wash away in time. Just remember though, you’ll be okay. Everything is going to be okay. :)
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Notes:
I wrote all of this around a month or two ago but sometimes (a lot of the time) I sit on these things. Not sure why. Maybe it’s the fear of being this open/vulnerable? But I don’t think I regret sharing it!
Speaking a little more about my depression - I used to not be depressed until I experienced a pretty traumatic phase in my life a few years ago. And it’s carried with me since that time. It kind of left an indelible mark on my psyche, but I think I’m slowly but surely getting better. It’s been a rollercoaster, but improvement isn’t linear!
Bonus:
I usually listen to R&B but this indie pop song really spoke to me - its lyrics really hit home in that, yeah, we’ll all just be grass and the flowers in time. It always makes me feel a bit better when it comes on.
Here’s a little passage from the song ^_^:
What's the point of living without dying for an ego?
So we validate our fantasies to feel like we are
Special inside, you know we love to lieWe like grabbing onto anything to feel like we're important
Not a moment that is shorter than a hiccup or a blink of an eye
You know we're scared of timeBut we're all gonna die, decompose into daffodils and dandelions
The bees will use our flowers for whatever they like
Make the honey that our grandkids will put inside their morning tea
It's the thing of life
so yeah! we're all gonna die! ;D
