by Amelia Bray

Created on: November 26, 2008

This is an article that i saw, and at once, i had to write for it. I was compelled too. Depression is this...all consuming, horrifying, for me; personally exhausting illness that takes over absolutely all parts of life. To not write, on such a subject would be...denying a whole part of me, one which i am still trying to come to terms with.

I was diagnosed with clinical depression coming up to three years ago. I guess, before hand, i should have seen the signs. I'd been taken to a hypnotist a couple of months before my diagnosis by my father, to solve an irrational fear of mine. The hypnotherapy failed because an integral part of what i was being asked to do was to remember something happy, so i could associate my fear with something happy instead. It hit me a few months later with a sickening 'feeling' that it failed because i couldn't think of anything happy.

I'd become emotionally numb.

Christmas, 2006, just after the school holidays, i found myself completely unwilling to go anywhere. I didn't want to leave my bed, but i did, of course, i needed too. How could i soil the one place i needed. The one place that could keep me safe? I needed food, water, people. It took a while for me to actually get out of bed, and resume life again. I've never managed to get back on track fully. It's still taking me so much time.

Living, with...this...curse i guess i could describe it as is hellish. Something i couldn't even begin to describe. I know my experiences with this is so different from every one else who has it. It is a deeply, terrifyingly personal illness that reaps pure vile hell through you. It is one of the most misunderstood and yet experienced illnesses out there. It's said that most people will have an experience with it, in some shape or form. Mine happened to be with actually suffering with it.

My one, major, problem with this 'visitor' of mine, is that it has ruined me. My life.

I can't...feel things. I'm constantly, tired, drained, both physically and emotionally, even though i don't really know what having an emotion is like any more. I find myself, so desperate in my 'recovery' (i know for certain i am over the worst part now) that i think for some way, any way, to find a way to feel something again. I go through the motion of having a feeling, but i don't really feel anything. I know how to laugh, and cry, and look like i'm happy, but i am so desperate for anything any hit of emotion to really be real.

It's a living night mare. One of the reasons i joined Helium, was to talk about this, let it be known that Depression, in any of it's forms, is not something that can be glamorised. The 'emo' stereotype has done nothing to help the situation of people being taken seriously with such an illness. The only help i have come to when told i have it. Everyone has it. No one can ever really understand how infuriating it is to have to explain yourself over and over, how insulting it is to have no one believe you, because your symptoms are different from the usual black eyeliner and skinny jeans.

I'm getting there. Slowly. It's just taking time.

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