laughingalonewithautoresponder:
“i’m so depressed,” posted the caucasion heterosexual cisgender teenage girl on her blog
“I’m so depressed” posted the person who is clinically depressed and who cannot help their depression despite their privilege because depression does not exclusively affect certain groups.
Here it is a little early for you. Thank you.
It’s starting to look a lot like Convention season! And I wanted to take this time to inform you all wondering where I am going, that the answer is no where. I’m gonna sit here all year and work on comics and other things for you and for me. So if you are waiting to get a book or shirt or something from me in person, I would suggest getting one now! I can still sign them and every bit helps. But that is up to you! The choice is yours.
Feel better! See you Monday!
“Depression is humiliating. It turns intelligent, kind people into zombies who can’t wash a dish or change their socks. It affects the ability to think clearly, to feel anything, to ascribe value to your children, your lifelong passions, your relative good fortune. It scoops out your normal healthy ability to cope with bad days and bad news, and replaces it with an unrecognizable sludge that finds no pleasure, no delight, no point in anything outside of bed. You alienate your friends because you can’t comport yourself socially, you risk your job because you can’t concentrate, you live in moderate squalor because you have no energy to stand up, let alone take out the garbage. You become pathetic and you know it. And you have no capacity to stop the downward plunge. You have no perspective, no emotional reserves, no faith that it will get better. So you feel guilty and ashamed of your inability to deal with life like a regular human, which exacerbates the depression and the isolation.
Depression is humiliating.
If you’ve never been depressed, thank your lucky stars and back off the folks who take a pill so they can make eye contact with the grocery store cashier. No one on earth would choose the nightmare of depression over an averagely turbulent normal life.
It’s not an incapacity to cope with day to day living in the modern world. It’s an incapacity to function. At all. If you and your loved ones have been spared, every blessing to you. If depression has taken root in you or your loved ones, every blessing to you, too.
Depression is humiliating.
No one chooses it. No one deserves it. It runs in families, it ruins families. You cannot imagine what it takes to feign normalcy, to show up to work, to make a dentist appointment, to pay bills, to walk your dog, to return library books on time, to keep enough toilet paper on hand, when you are exerting most of your capacity on trying not to kill yourself. Depression is real. Just because you’ve never had it doesn’t make it imaginary. Compassion is also real. And a depressed person may cling desperately to it until they are out of the woods and they may remember your compassion for the rest of their lives as a force greater than their depression. Have a heart. Judge not lest ye be judged.” —
Pearl (via thesunshinewaitingtobefound)
Stuff you need to know about me.
(via spastasmagoria)
This is so true. People, if sometimes I don’t respond to you, or if I’m snippy, or if I’m overly sarcastic and shallow, it’s not because I don’t like you. It’s because of this.
(via maybenotboring)
A good post.
(via detectivepunchymchitsthings)
SAUCY WINKS 4 LADIES: [POSSIBLE TRIGGER WARNING: discussion of mental illness, medication.]
I am just so tired of this gross and grossly common ~belief~ that, for someone with mental illness, medication will numb you; it will strip out your feelings; it will cut out what makes you you.
The thing is, some medications work differently than other medications! Paxil is not Effexor is not Wellbutrin is not Lithium. And sometimes medication doesn’t work for some people with mental illness, at all. But sometimes medication does work! Sometimes it works BEAUTIFULLY. Sometimes you have to try a couple different medications before you find one that works for you. Sometimes you have to take a couple different medications together. Sometimes you need just one. Sometimes medication, while effective, just isn’t for you!
Blanket statements are nobody’s friend. No one person’s mental illness is the same as another person’s. The problem with the aforementioned belief—that psychiatric medication will effectively shut you down—is that it demonizes psychiatric medication! It says, “Psychiatric medication is scary and bad, and wouldn’t it be better just to deal with your illness on your own instead of taking this medication? After all, your illness can’t be that bad!” It says, “You shouldn’t take psychiatric medication. You should do this on your own.” It says, “Your mental illness is you.”
Maybe you, reading this, can do it on your own. But I can’t. When I’m not medicated, that’s when I’m numb. That’s when my feelings are dull and washed out and gone. I’m erratic and irrational and dangerous to myself. I have horrible and terrifying obsessive thoughts and compulsions of self-violence. None of that is me. For me, medication has proved a savior. I write when I’m medicated, because I have the clarity of mind needed to concentrate on my work. I read books and watch TV and play games, because I can enjoy them. When I’m on my medication, I can feel. And I love feeling. I love emotions. I love loving. Sometimes I even love arguments, not because I enjoy arguing, but because it’s just so astounding to be able to feel anger.
So—when you say “psychiatric medication is dangerous and it will fuck you up,” what I hear is “you would be better off scared and alone and dead inside again.”
Stop saying that.
this this this this this all of this
Echoing Rin’s “this this this this this all of this” because seriously, this is so fucking important, and I’m not going to add anything because I should be writing a paper right now, but THIS.
Fuck you, random guy in a coffee shop the other day who called depression a weakness.
I just needed to say that. It’s been bothering me all week.
