Depression Index

This was an index I never really expected to make, but I've got 30 posts tagged depression and I'm told talking about my experience has helped others.

I guess I'll divide it into two sections, first about myself, second being story type things.

So, on talking about myself, the first post I made was But I got so damned depressed and it was my attempt at explaining what my experience with depression has been like.

Depression and NaNoWriMo - I didn't realize until after I'd written this post that what I was trying to say with it is the depression, or at least certain kinds of it, and writer's block have a lot in common, it's just that depression applies to much more than just writing.  But since I didn't figure that out until after I wrote the post it's an open question as to how useful the post is.

"What have you been up to?" - When the answer is nothing you don't need your depression to put a negative spin on things for it to be depressing.  The fact that, due to depression, you haven't actually been doing anything is bad enough on its own.

What I said to be told "Grow up and get over yourself." - It was pointed out that the Millennial generation, my generation, would have to, basically, save the world.  I didn't say I wouldn't do it.  I just said that it pisses me off that we've had these myriad problems dumped on our shoulders and those who came before didn't even bother to provide decent healthcare.  I'm supposed to save the world with untreated depression.  My sister when she's forced to take bad jobs at companies that are part of the problem just so she can get the healthcare she needs.  The rest of my generation faces similar problems because we're being told, "We fucked up the world, you'll have to fix it while sick.

In which I don't grow up or get over myself - How I responded to the person telling me to grow up and get over myself, and why what he said to me deserves to be in textbooks as how not to respond to someone with depression.

My financial situation, and my home - More about some of the fallout from depression than depression itself. The fact that I'm not in a mental state capable of holding a job, how depression caused a good investment to tank, how that ties into the fact that I might lose my home.

We're not all the same - We aren't.  Knowing one person with depression does not mean you know them all.  Responding to someone who can't do something because of depression with, "Well I know someone with depression who can," is wrong and, frankly, insulting.  People are different.  Even if we ignore the fact that depression can take myriad different forms, the people who have it differ from each other.

A note to my body - A short silly thing after it seemed like my body was trying very hard to prove me right when I talked about my inability to hold a job.

Concerning myself, my lack of job, and my mental state - Talk about the difficulties in getting things done, the experience of getting to a meeting, and what may be the first time I compared the experience of having a sprained ankle with depression.  Sprained ankle, minor inconvenience, big willingness to help on the part of others.  Depression, major inconvenience, not nearly so much willingness to help.

A Moderate Breakdown - I have a nervous breakdown.

Breakdown update - A few days later.

A family meeting -  Description of what I was feeling during a family meeting I endured.

Is ze even alive anymore? - Wondering if people are dead, not realizing people have died, trying to stop others from wondering if you're dead.  That sort of thing.

On the temptation to give up and spend my life screaming profanities into the empty space - Actually more on the reasons for that temptation.

Music - Sometimes getting up, getting a CD, and putting it in something that can play a CD is more work than I can manage, this is some stuff I listen to when that's the case.

My hoped for future doesn't exist - I've been dealing with depression for more than a decade.  In that time many of the things I hoped to do have become impossible.  Time has passed and in it's passing the world has changed.  My life may have been on hold, but the rest of the world wasn't.

Rejoice, rejoice, we have no choice - How I keep going.

Food helps - I managed to start starving myself without noticing I had done so, eating enough food improved things.

One in One Billion Two Hundred Fifteen Million Five Hundred Thousand - The reason I enter the publishers clearing house sweepstakes (odds of winning are the title of the post) isn't that I think I have much chance of winning, it's just that everything else I can do seems to have even less of a chance of making things work out.

Advice given to depressed people - This is my most popular post in the history of ever.  It's about bad advice.  And the non-depressed people who, with the best of intentions, think they can solve your depression the same way they solve their own experience of feeling down.

A depressing metaphor for my life - Trouble with a hanging plant seems symbolic of everything else.

Metapost about future posts being posted in the future, and stuff - Mostly not about depression, and what is tends toward how that has affected posting.

If you could see how I feel and depression metaphors from the nondepressed - about the problems of invisible illnesses, like depression, and also about a non depressed person who found a metaphor that allowed her to think about dficepression in a way that has resulted in her being the best ally I've met in my offline life.

Sometimes it really would be best to leave me the fuck alone - I open with talking about how depression can be isolating and that can require people to reach out even when the depressed person may not want them to or push them away, and talk about how that plays into the fantasy at the root of certain kinds of fiction, then move on to talking about how that still leaves some times when it really is for the best to just leave a depressed person alone, go into venting, and close on an incoherent dream.

I'm sad - exactly what it says.

"Should I be worried?" - A question I was asked with two rather different answers.

Say something, damn it! - A request for comments because, given my mental state, I really do need the validation.

Time - There never seems to be enough.

[It seems like my depression has been largely dealt with with medication, so posts after this point with the tag are... questionable I guess.  But not the fiction ones below.]

Coping, and lack thereof - ADHD had always been suspected, but it never came out to play enough to get an actual diagnosis.  It was held in check by the depression.  I don't think I ever realized how well I was dealing with the depression (which seemed by any measure to be not well at all) until the depression got out of the way and the ADHD was able to come to full force.  Since I have developed no means of coping with it (unlike the depression) it's possibly messing me up more than the depression did.

Curling up in a ball on the floor doesn't work with glasses - It really doesn't.

Did I mention that I've run out of hope? - It's actually somehow harder when you can't blame it on the depression.  When you're not sure, is this a lingering effect of the depression, or a completely rational assessment of where I stand?

An update on School - sort of a description of how the change from major problem = depression to major problem = ADHD has been with respect to school.

Don't minimize other people's problems. - That is a command.  An order.  Imperative mood.  Do not minimize other people's problems. The post is largely about what prompted me to say it, and a bit about the depression-ADHD changeover.

Check who the exhaust might hit before venting - I don't know if it's a lingering effect of the depression or part of who I am, but other people's problems become my problems, emotionally at least, so venting (at least certain types but I don't get into that distinction in the post) hurts me and brings me down.  Yet people who love me do it at me anyway.  Don't be like them.  When you need to vent make sure that the audience is someone who can take it without great suffering.  That's what the post is about.

Fiction

Or at least fictionish things.

The first post I ever wrote tagged depression was a combination of fiction fragment, story idea, and description of what it can be like when something breaks through the depression.  It was:
Coping with Depression via Vampires.

Superpowers, diagnosis, and treatment - The Twilight Vampires have superpowers beyond the standard vampire set.  In the Cullen brood they have someone who can read minds and someone who can both read and influence emotions.  If you don't see tremendous potential for good here (if they'd only bother to use them for that) you're not looking hard enough.

NaNoWriMo excerpt - Ryan on Stalling - The first person narrator talks about stalling out.