Personal pondering - Depression

[Guest]

I feel like I'm driving over a broken bridge, one that cuts short at one point and sends you diving into the cold waters bellow. Why, since when, how? I don't remember. I think it started somewhere around twelve years ago, during my transition into teenage years.

Maybe someone put me on this path for some reason or no one cared to warn me. Maybe no one knew, no one ever took it so curiosity took me down this path. Either way, I've been driving on it so long that I've completely stopped paying attention to stop signs and warnings. After all, what are stop signs on a sacluded road, where there no police, no one to run over or thing to hit, just occasinal wreck of people who were careless. "I can take it, I can finish the road.", you tell yourself, completely oblivious to where the road leads. When you see a million stop signs, and never meet your end, they start to lose their meaning. Useless. Untrue. Pointless. You think to yourself that somewhere near here there is an exit of the bridge, hoping that the thing has to end somewhere and in a good way. If it's a bad way, you trust yourself you will know when to stop.

You don't care to remember how long you've been on the path, how many stop signs you've missed. Even viewing the cities and naturein the distance, the one you've been detached from so long, becomes a distant dream. You can't get there, so why wish for it? The salty air, the birds, the blue around you, all become boring to watch. You've also stop watching the road. You can just set your hand wheel to drive straight, because, you know you can't hit anything. There is nothing to hit.

Even the occasianal fellow road traveler you meet and exchange kind words with are only an obsticle. You complain about the sun today, the bumpy road, ask each other why you're doing it. None of you remember way. You have fun and you ask yourself if maybe you should try enjoying the road again, slow down and match their speed, so you can talk while driving. But no, you remember you have to reach the end of the road. This makes people that come in the opposite direction seem stupid. They do not see the road as it is, they cannot reach the end, so they try and change it. Cowards, all of them. However, you think about turning around and trying to ask why they gave up. You never do it, you just see that they gave up.

In the end, there is nothing to do and return into yourself. Ponder, develop your inner worlds while the time passes. What's outside does not matter anymore. The terrible truth strikes you; those are not end signs, they are milestones. One after another, you lose count. Each a chance to turn back before the end hits. You don't even want to think about how long it's been or how many of those cursed stop signs you've failed to see.

Anxiety. Panic. Is it too late to turn? Go through the whole path again, path you've seen once and don't think there is anything interesting to see. Will you run out of gas before you get back and have to walk the way? Is there really something to return to right now? Questions strike you. Is it the best thing to do, simply to turn sharp left or right and drive off the bridge? End the constant questions.

Aurorans, friends, fellow drivers, this is not pondering of suicide. I will not do it, because driving of the bridge would not be quiting, it would be throwing it all away. A greatest sin in the eyes of gods existant or non-existant.

I ask you, because, at the apex of my life, where the longest most important bit was spent in mindless driving, where you cannot see the begining or the end of it, I do not know which way to carry on. Do I simply continue ahead with both my best friend and worst enemy, Hope, thinking that everything will be okay and the bridge is not broken? Or do I turn back and sludge the road, trying to reach the end before I run out of fuel? What do you think, those of you who drove the path, who avoided it or are still driving? What does one do with their life?

Edit: I've once again failed to describe what depression feels like, but the question still stands. Don't be afraid to give advice, you cannot really ruin my life more than I'm doing it myself.

[Kerbal22]

Depression is different for different people.

For me...

Depression is an ally and an enemy. It is a darkness that is all encompassing, and painful. You can not leave the darkness. You can not move. You can only struggle inside your own mind. The light is so close, but the darkness won't let you. In time, Stockholm syndrome sets in. As people drift away because you become more and more withdrawn, the darkness becomes less of an enemy, and more of a friend. The only one beside you. And suddenly, you're not bound by the darkness anymore, but it's still there. Even in the light, it lingers and walks beside you, always coming at you in bad times. Depression is bipolar. One moment the darkness is your ally, the next, it is your enemy.

I have struggled with the darkness for so long that i can't be released from my binds. I am reaching the apex of a journey that began six years ago. I am miserable everyday because i am lonely. I see no attachment to this life. I have no reason to stay other than the fact that my mother is still recovering from the death of my father.

No, i am not going to commit suicide, but there is simply little to nothing here for me.

I don't feel any emotions. Nothing. It's all just blank. Happiness, sadness..joy and despair. All acting.

The only thing i feel is misery and hopelessness.

No pain. Just darkness.

Cherish the pain, it lets you know you're still alive.

[Dea Tacita]

I've pretty much chronically suffered from depression from as far back as I can remember. I overcame my depression in my mid twenties through sheer determination, enjoying my work, and eight cubic fucktons of medication.

However (as almost everyone knows) I have a terminal, degenerative neurological disorder called Huntington's. When I was diagnosed with this, I felt like I was drowning, and for a time I remained like that. Before eventually deciding It was going to end the way it was, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was better for awhile, met a bunch of friendly people on SS-13 and got me a sexy girly-friend, and even planned a trip to visit Thunds!

But I seemed to have buoyed back into that drowning situation after breaking my leg, canceling my trip, having my girlfriend break-up with me, and beginning to have an utter realization that my life, within a handful of years would be over.

As for suicide, It's something I've planned to do before I begin the process of losing my mental faculties that inevitably accompanies Huntington's. Hell, if I've been driving underwater for a mile in a car, and haven't gotten anywhere. Why not just get out and drown?

I don't particularly mean this to have any...meaning honestly. I simply felt the need to vent on this thread with my building frustrations and, well because talking helps me calm down in some cases.

[Jakers457]

I wouldn't say I was going through depression per say. But back when I was sixteen, I was under a lot of pressure from many things and were kind of let down by a lot of people. I eventually gave in to the pressure,turning to cutting myself and also cutting words into myself just to sort of vent my anger into something, opposed to punching walls or hurting those dear to me in my life at the time. Eventually my Mother caught wind of what I was doing and she was in a state, mainly because our family has had mental health and suicide incidents in the past.

Eventually, as Dea said, I pulled through with immense willpower to overcome my frustrations and anxieties so that I wouldn't put my family through it. My little sister also went through the same thing earlier this year, almost losing her to an overdose on painkillers if she hadn't gotten second thoughts and told someone she was ODing. She also overcame that desire, seeing her family at her bedside all in a state and feeling a lot of regret for doing it. I mean, mine wasn't severe as my sister but what I'm trying to say, is that if you are suffering or have inclinations to do things to put your health at risk. Use those dearest to you as an anchor, be it this community, your family or perhaps close friends, convince yourself that you are needed, are wanted and are love by them and that you'd never let them down. That's my two cents on the whole topic though.