Depression: A silent fight
“YOU DON’T LOOK DEPRESSED.” BREAKING DOWN THE STIGMATIZATION OF HIGH FUNCTIONING DEPRESSION.
By Meagan DeMaria
(Kendall Lane / Unsplash)
For as long as I can remember, I have struggled with thoughts and feelings so dark and deep they’ve threatened to swallow me whole. They sit at the bottom of my stomach like a stone you’d drop to the bottom of a well. This lump seizes every part of my body — crawling, clawing, and ripping through my insides. On the bad days, the weight becomes so heavy I find myself struggling to breathe, being pulled down and drowning in my own blood. On the really bad days, I want nothing more than to pull apart my skin, shoving my hands inside myself, desperately trying to pull it out. But the thing about the bad days is — I’m really good at hiding them.
When I tell people that I suffer from depression, the response is usually something like: a head tilt followed by, “Really? I would have never guessed.” Part of me feels like I should be proud to get that response. Like I have accomplished some fantastic feat by hiding the parts of myself that ultimately make me, me. But then there’s the other part of me — the part that feels, angry, ashamed, and scared.
I’m not disillusioned. I understand why people respond that way. I don’t look like the typical depressed person. I have a full-time job, I regularly communicate with family and friends, I participate in social gatherings, I’m good at making small talk, I take on multiple responsibilities, and in general, I’m a high achieving and highly productive person.
But I also get overwhelmed easily, have intrusive thoughts, hold so much tension that my hands constantly shake, over-think things so much I induce panic attacks, struggle to get out of bed, disassociate from my surroundings, and fight feelings of hopelessness, emptiness, and existential dread daily. At the end of most days, I am completely exhausted from even the smallest tasks, like responding to an email from a coworker, or texting a friend about their day, or performing basic self-care like showering and eating. But I get all my work done. In fact, I tend to excel at meeting deadlines and standards, and I maintain a healthy lifestyle—I eat well, I exercise regularly, and I engage in several hobbies. The disconnect between these two parts of my life, these two parts of myself, is what I think is at the root of reactions like, “Really? I would have never guessed.”
Depression is often seen as “All or nothing.” If you have depression, you’re supposed to spend hours, days, even weeks at a time in bed, unable to hold down a job, maintain relationships, or perform basic daily functions. And if you can do those things, it’s like “Well, what the fuck are you depressed about?” “You can’t possibly be depressed—you just ran a marathon, had a kid, graduated college, started your dream job, got a promotion, make tons of money,” or whatever the fuck it is that normal, non-depressed people do.
But the thing about depression is that it doesn’t care if you’re good at your job, or if you make lots of money, or if you’re social, or healthy, or any of that. Depression, like most mental health conditions, doesn’t discriminate. What’s more, depression isn’t always visible. And because it’s not, people are shocked to learn that someone like me — someone as productive as me, as social as me, as “happy” as me — could be depressed.
That shock is dangerously misinformed. When people respond with surprise when I tell them I have depression, not only do I regret talking about my mental health, but I also feel invalidated. Like my struggles are not hard enough, serious enough, visible enough to justify my depression. As if mental health conditions need any fucking justification. When I get that response, I feel ashamed of having depression, I feel ashamed of not being able to push away the dark cloud of despair constantly looming over me, I feel ashamed that I’m not able to simply “get over it” or “look on the bright-side of things” or to “think positively,” I feel ashamed that my brain doesn’t function like a normal, healthy, non-depressed person’s brain.
The worst part is that I already fucking feel all of those things all of the time. Depression is more than just feeling sad. It is feeling like you are worthless, like the universe would be better if you didn’t exist at all. So much of my life is dedicated to fighting those thoughts, to pushing back tears, to refusing to feed the lump in my stomach that growls and bites at my insides, to fighting to stay alive. When I open up and talk about my struggles and get a “Really? I would have never guessed” in response, I actively fight to not scream at the top of my lungs out of frustration, anger, and desperation.
I have spent so much time fighting in silence, fighting in the dark, grasping for something or someone to hold on to only to get fistfuls of air. When people say “Really? I would have never guessed,” I feel misunderstood, sad, and annoyed, but mostly I feel unsupported. I feel like I have to tattoo the word “depressed” on my fucking forehead to get even a sliver of understanding. Just once I wish someone would respond with an ounce of sympathy or empathy. Just once I wish someone would say “Wow, and yet you accomplish so much. I’m so proud of you.” Just once I wish the reaction wouldn’t be surprise, but genuine support and concern. Just once I wish I wouldn’t have to carry the weight all by myself. Just once when I reach out my hand, I wish someone would hold it in return.
I know that the lump in my stomach will never go away. I know that I will always have bad days. And I know that I will always go through life feeling heavier than most. But what I would really like to know is that I’m not alone, that I don’t have to be visibly struggling in order to get the support I need and deserve.
This piece was written and shared during the IDONTMIND Writing Workshop. Learn more about our free, nine-week course and be the first to know about the next workshop here. Visit Mental Health Connecticut’s YouTube channel for a video version of Meagan’s story.
Meagan DeMaria is a writer and mental health advocate based in Queens, NY. Her hope is that through her writing she will be able to help others feel less alone in their mental health journeys and inspire them to share their own stories. In her free time, Meagan enjoys reading, painting, and advocating for social justice issues.
