What is depression? To someone like me, it seems to be a never-ending battle that gets tougher to face with each passing day. Maybe because society says normal people should be and act a certain way fitting into a mold; which may work for the vast majority of people but there are some of us who no matter how we try, we can not fit into that mold. We're the outsiders, the rebels without a cause who walk the path alone and turn our backs on conventional ways of living, of growing. It's not necessarily anything to be proud of in all honesty; the lone wolf lifestyle can be as its name implies a very lonely way to fight through the world. Emptiness, misery, the constant questioning of where to go from here; these are the only feelings you actually get to feel inside of you along with anger, pain, and hopelessness.
It's a never-ending cycle that's taken on with no one to blame for it but yourself. Turning your back on many things normal people strive for: love, connection, settling down in the suburbs to live a quiet life; these are all ideas that just seem too far out of reach for people who are lost and yet again it's because of choices we've made that are the real reason why we are the way we are. We can't grasp those ideas of being happy because we can't feel the positive emotions that should round a person out; almost like looking at both sides of a coin the head and the tail, with the head completely scratched out leaving nothing but a disfigured marking. Reasons for this are hard to put a name to because each individual person in the world is different and the experiences each person goes through within their lifetime are what make each of us who we are. So it becomes harder to find the root cause and be able to just 'snap out of it' because as time goes on and the world throws more burdens in your face, what originally may have started you on this dark path is buried under layers and layers of other burdens.
But we choose not to show it and perhaps because of that, we choose not to deal with it. Society doesn't want to hear about people who are down or depressed and so most people facing that problem choose to hide it behind a front and deal with their pain alone. Sometimes you can become so good at hiding it no one would ever suspect that inside, you feel torn up; a recent example would be the death of Wade Belak, a former NHL star proclaimed dead by suicide on August 31, 2011 after which his close family revealed he had been battling depression for years on his own, shocking the hockey world that this laid back, upbeat, friendly guy was in actuality tortured by his own thoughts. Hiding it just becomes natural over time because by pretending it's not there, it gets a little easier to handle at times. Unfortunately it's not always denial that can keep it down and more often than not, the lone wolf stumbles down a path of self-destruction and lands in more dark situations that only add to the misery. As we self-destruct more and more it becomes harder to place ourselves in a state of vulnerability, of being able to open up and express our twisted thoughts. We feel no one will understand because anyone who doesn't battle depression can't fully understand the hopelessness; society confuses depression with being sad or facing the blues that should be able to be snapped out of.
Unfortunately it's not that simple because any belief in yourself or any sense of self-esteem and self-worth are long dead inside along with any hope that things will get better. We can't believe in ourselves because we don't possess that balanced state of mind, again the scratched coin. Something is missing inside and it has its effect on our thoughts, our hopes, our dreams, and our actions.
We find it hard to connect to anyone, to truly knock the down the walls and let somebody in. We feel ashamed of feeling how we do, other people can deal with their pain why can't we? We feel like exposing our true thoughts and feelings is just a pity party, hoping to sponge up some source of comfort even if it is pity. So instead, we don't connect we stay alone and bury our true feelings. It's a choice we make to hide it, to not deal with it and by keeping up appearances for others, we feel even more alone.
We feel trapped in our lives, unable to move forward and make any attempt to get better and because we choose to hide it from the people we're closest to, we don't get the encouragement we need to try to move forward. We've turned our backs on what others around us may look for out of life unable to comprehend why they strive to find what they're looking for and as a result, they are unable to comprehend what's really inside of us. We sink further into depression and hide it more and more, feeling more alone with each passing day. It sounds repetitive but that's the case when fighting this illness; it's a repetition of the same feelings of emptiness spiraling further downwards until we do end up completely alone. As Alter Bridge says, a band known for it's very dark and complex lyrics in battling loss of faith and hope we are:
Left to face, this alone
Left to die with nothing we can own
Left to break, in the cold
In the void that we made
The moment we let love go.
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