My Weakness Is None Of Your Business

So let's be serious for a bit. Not long, I promise - I shall self-destruct if I do the whole serious thing for too long, and the result may not be pretty. But just this once...

I would love, eloquently and straightfowardly, to be able to explain depression - not just symptoms in an A-Z list, but the actual effect of it all, the overwhelming, drenching wave of utter hopelessness... But, as that sentence proved, I can't, without resulting in what sounds like melodrama. That's perhaps because it is, utimately, all rather melodramatic. It can feel like the world is ending, and if it doesn't, well, it can feel like it flippin' well should - and quickly. Depression is all-encompassing. It probably affects different people in different ways, and to different degrees, but ultimately, it's disabling, sometimes just in some aspects, sometimes disasterously so. It can stop you from doing things, from daily tasks to one-off acts, and if it doesn't, it can at the very least stop you from enjoying them. Small things take on the deepest significance. Throwaway comments from friends become the most piercing of criticisms, cheap digs suggest you might have hurt someone irreparably, whereas in reality the person you think you've hurt is probably oblivious to your angst. Emails soliciting no reply cause panic: the person must hate you, or they would have responded. Numbing paranoia ensues. Obsession with the tiniest things takes over. Depression can cause tidal waves of unshakable anxiety - sleeplessness, nausea - the whole bundle. You want to curl up in a corner and sob yourself to an early grave, or, worse, you lash out at others, and THEN you want to sob yourself to an early grave. You can convince yourself you are a terrible person who damages everything she touches, and wonder if the world would be better off without you. Nothing is fun any more - not even the things you enjoy, or the things you are best at. Life becomes something to dread; day after day activities become just a means of passing the time - and managing to do even that is an achievement. The sensible bit of your brain can't override the bit that says "I want it all to go away. I want to go away. I can't do this any more."

And, worst of all, eventually someone will blithely say to you "Cheer up" or (lethal!) "pull yourself together!" or even a simple "snap out of it." (To which I believe the response is "I'll snap YOU out of it if you don't...[insert phrase of choice here]" After which, of course, you will feel irrepressively guilty, having hurt someone you love, will assume that they never want to see your sorry ass again, and why should they? because frankly YOU don't want to see you're sorry ass again. You're useless, you're a nuisance... And so it goes on.

I can't explain it well, but I would urge everyone to read Marcus Tresothick's autobiography. It helps, of course, that the bloke is one of the greatest cricketer's the world (well, at the very least, Somerset) has ever known. But it does go to show this: you can have everything going for you. You can be hugely successful, great at what you do. You can be physically attractive. You can have, to all intents and purposes, a great life - a lovely, supportive family and enough money not to have to worry about making ends meet. But with depression, and whatever the likes of Janet Street Porter (*coughBITCHcough*) might write in whatever rag remunerates her to wind people up, none of that matters. It can affect anyone, of any age, of either sex. And unlike a lot of illnesses it isn't always visible. Someone may be full of bravado, acting the class clown, a joy to be around,but on the inside they might be tearing themselves apart in gradual, painful little rips.

So be kind to people. Try to understand, and if you don't, accept that because it isn't something you can fully grasp, it doesn't make it any less real, or any less painful. Be kind to other people, and be kind to yourself.

In the words of Forrest Gump, that's all I have to say about that.