I describe living with depression as living in an abyss.

I am at the bottom of a very deep hole, its dark, the sides are very hard to climb and in the middle of the bottom of the hole is a horrible black lake.

Because Depression is not a static condition, where I am in the Abyss describes where I am in the mental illness.

Sometimes I am underwater in the middle middle of a black lake at the bottom of by Abyss.  I spent nearly two years in bed without a job and this eventually turned into homelessness.  I was underwater during most of that time.

And sometimes I’m on the shore of the lake unable to muster the energy to try climbing the walls. When I first got a job while homeless, this is how I felt.

And sometimes, most of the time these days, I’m climbing up the walls toward the surface. For the last year, I have been trying to figure out a system to get the fuck out of the hole.  Or at least spend more time near the top, where there is at least some light.

Sometimes I get to the edge of the surface.  I can see grand vistas of normal life before I slip back in.  Sometimes these moments only last for a few hours, recently they have lasted for a few days.

I dream of getting out of the Abyss and walking away from the hole.  Too far away to fall back in.   This is probably a fairytale, but I dream of it anyway.

1. Remind yourself and us that this is an illness not a character flaw.  We aren’t lazy.  We aren’t antisocial.  We aren’t irresponsible.  We are ill.  Remind both of us, often.
2. Don’t wait until we hit rock bottom, thinking that is when we will finally try.  We probably are trying but for us a huge success is a tiny everyday matter for you.
3. Socialize with us.  We won’t want you to, but do it anyway.  This will mean not accepting it when we don’t want to do anything or talk. This works much better if you don’t wait to intervene until we have completely cut ourselves off from the world.
4. Get us to a doctor.  Take us.  Make sure we take the meds if we seem like we don’t want to.
5. Take us for walks.  Short walks at first, but walk outside. Exercise is a huge help for us but we can’t change patterns easily and so starting a walk is hard.
6. Help us with practical things – doing our laundry or cleaning.  If possible we should help but don’t overwhelm us with a huge plan to fix all the things wrong in the household.  Do something reasonable and directly obvious.
7. Doing productive things helps.  So if we had a hobby like knitting or drawing or whatever, come over and do it with us for a while.
8. Put us in new situations.  Not overwhelming ones – just things that make our  brain move outside the existing pathways that have us tied into a rut of nothingness.  A concert in the park, a new restaurant, the zoo, anything that is not the usual.
9. Encourage us to talk or write about our issues and frustrations.
10. Don’t assume we aren’t trying because we didn’t do something.
11. Don’t hide what you are doing, pretending you are not trying to help.  Explain why you are doing it and why it’s a good idea for us.       Depressed people aren’t stupid and we want to get better.  Manipulation is condescending.
12. Don’t wait for us to ask.  We probably won’t.

At some point this year, I gave up on the idea of Recovery.  And I switched to the idea of Management.

This sounds very much like I have given up.  But in fact, I think it is the opposite.  I no longer hope for a long term goal of being free of depression, but I work for a daily goal of improving today.

Depression is so invisible, even to the person who is drowning in its waters.  I have spent my life dogged by varying degrees of depression. Most of that time, I either didn’t recognize it, or didn’t acknowledge it.  But it remained none the less

There have been times when it was clearly predominant and deeply entrenched in every aspect of my life, as it was when I couldn’t leave my bed, eventually ran out of money and became homeless.

There have been times when it ran quietly in the background, while I ran a call center of 70 people, had a very active social life and felt physically great.  In those days, I refused to acknowledge it because my life was wonderful, I couldn’t be depressed.

Depression is there.  Sometimes it is quiet and less dampening, only pestering the quiet corners of my life.  Sometimes it is everywhere.  But its not going away.  My brain has deep ruts in certain pathways that make up depression.

So now I accept it and plan a way out of its problematic aspects.  Now I just want to live a life that is better than the one I have been living for the last 10 years.

I’m working on developing habits and routines, so my brain will have entrenched pathways to go to when I need to do things.  Habits make life run more easily, so when I’m depressed, its easier to start the brain program for an already established habit than to do something I have no set habit for.

But not all of life is a routine.  So, now my life must planned like a battle.  Each day, the depression must be assessed.  How deep is the hole today?   How much of an effort is it going to be?  Each day a plan must be done.  And on days when the hole is deep,  each activity, will be broken into tiny tasks.  Each tiny task must be tackled one at a time.  Each tiny task must have a timer set for its start. T minus 20 minutes to get out of bed.

This doesn’t sound very pleasant.  And some days it isn’t and somedays it just doesn’t happen at all.  But what is pleasant is the feeling of victory I get when I accomplish things that other people just don’t even notice.

And what is most important is that since I started this change of view – my life has improved.  My mindset has improved and the depression doesn’t seem as impossible to conquer anymore.

Because I’m no longer hoping for complete annihilation of the depression.  I’m working for domination over the depression.  

Image by Mrbasilisk on Deviantart.