I Think Not

"Nobody likes being alone that much. I don’t go out of my way to make friends, that’s all. It just..."

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 17:54:53 -0600

“Nobody likes being alone that much. I don’t go out of my way to make friends, that’s all. It just leads to disappointment.”

- Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood. (via shyofaspark)

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Thu, 14 Mar 2013 23:45:14 -0600

"Literally, psychologist means ‘one who studies the soul’, we think of it as a scary word in our..."

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 21:03:50 -0600

“Literally, psychologist means ‘one who studies the soul’, we think of it as a scary word in our harsh-sounding, Germanic language, but it actually means something really beautiful. I also like that it is ambiguous as to whether it’s me studying my own soul, or yours, or you studying my soul, or me asking you to study your own. It’s like a big impossible object that goes around and around.”

- Iain Woods

(via kelseypmft)

On Going Public With Depression (CNN)

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 00:56:28 -0600

On Going Public With Depression (CNN):

psychotherapy:

By Kat Kinsman, CNN

I am 14 years old, it’s the middle of the afternoon, and I’m curled into a ball at the bottom of the stairs. I’ve intended to drag my uncooperative limbs upstairs to my dark disaster of a bedroom and sleep until everything hurts a little less, but my body and brain have simply drained down. I crumple into a bony, frizzy-haired heap on the gold shag rug, convinced that the only thing I have left to offer the world is the removal of my ugly presence from it, but at that moment, I’m too exhausted to do anything about it.

I sink into unconsciousness, mumbling over and over again, “I need help… I need help… I need help.” I’m too quiet. No one hears.

Several months, countless medical tests and many slept-through school days later, a diagnosis is dispensed, along with a bottle of thick, chalky pills. There is palpable relief from my physician and parents; nothing is physically wrong with me (thank God, not the cancer they’ve quietly feared) — likely just a bout of depression. While it helps a little to have a name for the sensation, I’m less enthralled with the diagnosis, because I know it will return. While this is the first time it’s manifested heavily enough for anyone else to see it, I’ve been slipping in and out of this dull gray sweater for as long as I can remember.

What doesn’t help at the time are the pills: clunky mid-1980s tricyclic antidepressants that seize up my bowels, cause my tongue to click from lack of moisture, and upon my return to school cause me to nearly pitch over a third-story railing from dizziness. I flush the rest and, mercifully, no one bothers me about it.

If they do, I probably don’t even notice; my brain is too occupied, thrumming with guilt, stupidity and embarrassment. Nothing is physically wrong. It’s all in your head. This ache, this low, this sickness, this sadness — they are of your making and there is no cure.

Now, 25 years later, I’ve lost too much time and too many people to feel any shame about the way my psyche is built. How from time to time, for no good reason, it drops a thick, dark jar over me to block out air and love and light, and keeps me at arm’s length from the people I love most.

The pain and ferocity of the bouts have never eased, but I’ve lived in my body long enough to know that while I’ll never “snap out of it,” at some point the glass will crack and I’ll be free to walk about in the world again. It happens every time, and I have developed a few tricks to remind myself of that as best I can when I’m buried deepest.

The thing that’s always saved me has been regular sessions with an excellent therapist and solidarity with other people battling the same gray monster (medication worked for me for a little while — I take nothing now, but it’s a lifesaver and a necessity for some). When I was diagnosed, it was not in an era of Depression Pride parades on the main street of my small Kentucky town. In 1987, less than one person in 100 was being treated for depression. That had doubled in 1997, and by 2007, the number had increased to slightly less than three.

My friend Dave was part of that tally. We met in our freshman year of college, and he was one of the loudest, funniest, most exuberant humans I’d ever met — and the most deeply depressed. Not that anyone outside our intimate circle knew; like many of us who live with the condition, he wore a brighter self in public to distract from the darkness that settled over him behind closed doors. Most people don’t see depression in others, and that’s by design. We depressives simply spirit ourselves away when we’ve dimmed so as not to stain those who live in the sun.

Dave saw it in me, though, and I in him; and for the first time in my life, I felt somewhat normal. Like I didn’t have to tap dance, sparkle and shine to distract from the fact that I was broken. I could just be me, and that wasn’t a half-bad thing in his eyes. I began to tell more people as plainly as I did other facts of my being — I was born in New Jersey, my real hair color under all this pink dye is very dark brown, and I’ve suffered from depression as long as I can remember. I’m Kat — nice to know you.

Dave never made it that far. His cracks were too deep and dark, and he poured so much vodka down into them to dilute the pain. A year after graduation, in the late summer of 1995, I was unsurprised but thoroughly gutted when I got the call — Dave had tidied his apartment, neatly laid out a note, his accounts and bills, next to checks from his balanced checkbook, and stepped into a closet with a belt.

I see Dave in little flashes all the time, still — hear his braying OHMYGAAWWWDD laugh around a corner and see his handsome gap-toothed smile in a crowd. I want to smack him full across the face for giving up and leaving us all, and I want to drag him to a computer and sit him down: Look — we’re not alone.

Dave was the first person I ever knew with Internet access. Among a million other things I wish he’d lived to see is the community of souls online, generously baring and sharing their depression struggles with strangers. There’s no substitute for quality therapy (in whatever flavor you take it) or medication (if that’s your cup of homeopathic tea), but by God, it’s hard to get there.

To see your feelings echoed and normalized in essays like comedian Rob Delaney’s much-forwarded “On Depression and Getting Help”; author Stephen Fry’s legendary letter to a fan, “It will be sunny one day”; the ongoing, public struggles of widely read bloggers and authors Dooce and The Bloggess; and guests of the no-edges-blunted WTF Podcast from comedian Marc Maron — all highly successful and public people — is to dare to let a crack of blue sky into the basement where you’ve been tucked away. I can barely imagine what it would have meant to my 14-year-old self to read Delaney’s words:

“The sole reason I’ve written this is so that someone who is depressed or knows someone who is depressed might see it. … But after having been through depression and having had the wonderful good fortune to help a couple of people who’ve been through it, I will say that as hard as it is, IT CAN BE SURVIVED. And after the stabilization process, which can be and often is f**king terrifying, a HAPPY PRODUCTIVE LIFE is possible and statistically likely. Get help. Don’t think. Get help.”

Or Fry’s:

“Here are some obvious things about the weather:
It’s real.
You can’t change it by wishing it away.
If it’s dark and rainy it really is dark and rainy and you can’t alter it.
It might be dark and rainy for two weeks in a row.
BUT
It will be sunny one day.
It isn’t under one’s control as to when the sun comes out, but come out it will.
One day.

It really is the same with one’s moods, I think. The wrong approach is to believe that they are illusions. They are real. Depression, anxiety, listlessness — these are as real as the weather — AND EQUALLY NOT UNDER ONE’S CONTROL. Not one’s fault.

BUT

They will pass: they really will.”

Dave will never see those words, or these, but someone will — including the 14-year-old me who still sometimes rides shotgun as I’m driving through a storm. I show her these words, these essays, these poems, these podcasts beamed out by the other souls who glitter out in the darkness. And I take her hand and lead her up the stairs.

These are my favorite posts, podcasts and essays on living with depression. Have another? Please share it in the comments below.

Rob Delaney - On Depression and Getting Help
Marc Maron and Todd Hanson - WTF Podcast
Kay Redfield Jamison - Acknowledging Depression
The Bloggess - The fight goes on
Dooce - Surrender
Stephen Fry - It will be sunny one day
David Foster Wallace - The Depressed Person
Rebecca O’Neal - The Depressive’s Guide to Comedy
Captain Awkward - The case for therapy
Katherine Sharpe - In Praise of Depression
Mooshinindy - The Depression Ones
Miss Banshee’s Inverse Candlelight — The Slip
William Styron - Darkness Visible
Hyperbole and a Half - Adventures in Depression

If you are depressed or have had thoughts of suicide, please seek help. Here are a few resources:

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
National Alliance on Mental Illness
Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance
American Psychiatric Association

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Fri, 24 Aug 2012 01:48:48 -0600

Jesus: Love thy neighbor as thyself.

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 22:52:06 -0600

Jesus: Love thy neighbor as thyself.
People: What if they’re gay?
Jesus: Did I ***** stutter?

"Life isn’t supposed to be an all or nothing battle between misery and bliss. Life isn’t supposed to..."

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 21:34:04 -0600

“Life isn’t supposed to be an all or nothing battle between misery and bliss. Life isn’t supposed to be a battle at all. And when it comes to happiness, well, sometimes life is just okay, sometimes it’s comfortable, sometimes wonderful, sometimes boring, sometimes unpleasant. When your day’s not perfect, it’s not a failure or a terrible loss. It’s just another day.”

- Barbara Sher (via thresca)

bohostring-s: Queue again. Sorry guys, Exams week. Wish me...

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 21:20:52 -0600

bohostring-s:

Queue again. Sorry guys, Exams week. Wish me luck. :)

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Thu, 12 Jul 2012 17:15:11 -0600

justlikeheaven1996: I invite you to my depressing world of...

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 12:33:07 -0600

justlikeheaven1996:

I invite you to my depressing world of black and white.

justlikeheaven1996: I invite you to my depressing world of...

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 00:47:02 -0600

justlikeheaven1996:

I invite you to my depressing world of black and white.

justlikeheaven1996: I invite you to my depressing world of...

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 14:59:01 -0600

justlikeheaven1996:

I invite you to my depressing world of black and white.

justlikeheaven1996: I invite you to my depressing world of...

Sun, 08 Jul 2012 18:37:04 -0600

justlikeheaven1996:

I invite you to my depressing world of black and white.

PLEASE

Sat, 07 Jul 2012 22:38:07 -0600

1: The last person you kissed screams they love you, you say...
2: Did you get to sleep in today?
3: You never know what you got until you lose it?
4: Do you have siblings?
5: How many kids do you want?
6: Who was the last person you held hands with?
7: Did you stand on your tippy-toes for your last kiss?
8: Do you think if you died, the last person you kissed would care?
9: Last person to talk on the phone?
10: Did anyone watch you the last time you kissed someone?
11: When’s your birthday?
12: Remember the first time you kissed the last person you kissed?
13: What kind of phone do you have?
14: Are you wearing jeans, shorts, sweatpants, or pajama pants?
15: Are you a different person now than you were 5 years ago?
16: What were you doing at 4 am?
17: Would you rather write a paper or give a speech?
18: Are you lying to yourself about something?
19: Last night you felt…?
20: What’s something you cannot wait for?
21: Ever told your parents you were going somewhere but when somewhere different?
22: How many hours of sleep did you get last night?
23: Are you a morning or night person?
24: What did you get your last bruise from?
25: Do you reply to all of your texts?
26: Your phone is ringing. It’s the person you fell hardest for. What do you do?
27: Did your last kiss take place in/on a bed?
28: Anyone you would like to get things straight with?
29: How many months until your birthday?
30: Favorite thing to eat with peanut butter?
31: Did you like this past summer?
32: What were you doing before you got on the computer?
33: Your ex is sitting next to you, with their new partner. What do you do?
34: What is the last thing you said out loud?
35: Your mood summed into one work?
36: Are you doing anything else besides taking this survey?
37: What are your initials?
38: Are you a happy person?
39: Do you still talk to the person you liked 4 months ago?
40: Where do you want to live when your older?
41: Have you had your birthday this year?
42: What did you do yesterday?
43: What will you be doing tomorrow?
44: How late did you stay up last night?
45: Is there anyone you would do anything for?
46: Is it hard to make you laugh?
47: Do you believe ex’s can be just friends?
48: Do you think any of your exes will eventually want to be with you again?
49: How many people have you had feelings for in the year of 2012?
50: Do you wish your ex was dead?
51: Have you ever dyed your hair?
52: Would ever take back someone that cheated?
53: Was New Year’s Even enjoyable?
54: Bet you’re missing someone right now?
55: How would your parents react if you got a tattoo?
56: Sleep on your back or stomach?
57: If you could move away, no questions asked, where would it be ?
58: What would you change about your life right now?
59: Has anything upset you in the past week?
60: Are you on the phone?
61: Today, would you rather go forward a week or back?
62: Would you take $40,000 or a brand new car?
63: Have you ever talked to someone when they were high?
64: Ever cried while you were on the phone with someone?
65: Have you ever copied someone elses homework?
66: Are you the type of person who liks to be out or at home?
67: Do you automatically check your phone when you wake up?
68: Have you ever stayed up all night on the phone?
69: Could you use some sleep right now?
70: Are you going to have a baby by the time you’re 18?
71: Does it bother you when someone hides things from you?
72: What’s your favorite color?
73: Have you ever slept in the same room with someone you liked?
74: Have you ever been looking for something and it was already in your hand?
75: Do you get annoyed easily?
76: If someone liked you, would you want them to tell you?
77: Do you have a person of the opposite sex that you can tell everything to?
78: Does anyone call you babe?
79: How many people of the opposite sex do you fully trust?
80: What do you prefer, relationship or one night stand?
81: What color hoodie did you wear last?
82: Is there someone who meant a lot to you at one point, and isn’t around anymore?

justlikeheaven1996: I invite you to my depressing world of...

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 16:44:59 -0600

justlikeheaven1996:

I invite you to my depressing world of black and white.

brokenmachine: #7

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 23:39:21 -0600

brokenmachine:

#7

"There is a reason I said I’d be happy alone. It wasnt because I thought I would be happy alone. It..."

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 23:20:19 -0600

“There is a reason I said I’d be happy alone. It wasnt because I thought I would be happy alone. It was because I thought if I loved someone and then it fell apart, I might not make it. It’s easier to be alone. Because what if you learn that you need love? And then you don’t have it. What if you like it? And lean on it? What if you shape your life around it? And then it falls apart? Can you even survive that kind of pain? Losing love is like organ damage. It’s like dying. The only difference is, death ends. This? It could go on forever.”

- Meredith Grey - Grey’s Anatomy (via quote-book)

"There are causes worth dying for, but none worth killing for."

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 23:18:13 -0600

“There are causes worth dying for, but none worth killing for.”

- Albert Camus (via girlwithoutwings)

I actually worry about this a lot…

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 23:15:58 -0600

I actually worry about this a lot…

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Wed, 04 Jul 2012 23:14:17 -0600