Today’s talk is about anger. I can tell you that when it comes to anger I have tons of it, so as I write we’ll see if I have anything worth reading about.
As a person with the Depression I am often shocked at the bullshit that people who have never suffered from depression will judge. They think they are strong, but it is unlikely that they have had to battle with their own bodies and minds so constantly and with such intensity. With the exception of un-natural deaths, like the death of a sibling at a young age or the death of a child, and the death of a spouse, the aforementioned “natural deaths”, those that are in the course of the normal cycle of life and death, are less painful for me than depression. Not only are they less painful, but the grieving period is shorter and the frequency in which they occur over the course of a live time is once for each. So how many days and nights of agony do these people have to endure, and how can that be as bad is living in agony for at minimum 50% of your life? Someone dies in the natural course of life, hopefully of old age, and someone grieves about them and that is comparable to depression? No way! They wouldn’t last a week in my shoes.
Someone I know is a “light” cigarette smoker. He smokes maybe three to four cigarettes a day. But he will go outside in the pouring rain or freezing cold to have that cigarette. So I really wanted to know how this addiction felt because if I miss my medicine my body with shake, I will sweat, I feel nauseous and get a migraine like headache. I will become riddled with anxiety and feel depressed enough to where I cannot seem to stop wishing I could kill myself. I’ve gone through withdrawal of Benzos so I know what that feels like too, but I probably wasn’t taking the amounts that addicts do. These are all painful symptoms with a definite physiological cause, I speak from experience. I don’t wish them upon anyone, except a very select few people who I really hate. So I asked him what happens when he misses a cigarette. His description of his feelings and sensations contained none of the things I listed above. None! So you can’t take the discomfort of your childlike desire for a cigarette, and you want to compare that to depression? You want to tell me that I have a weak character, and that I should try harder, and that I should “snap out of it”, and whatever the fuck you want to tell me? You don’t know shit about living a life of torture! You don’t know real pain.
At least I’m aware enough to know that there are worse things in life to suffer than depression. The death of a child has to be as bad or worse, I imagine. Loosing limbs, being tortured, other serious mental illnesses, etc. When I see anyone in pain I feel for them, unless they have judged me. Then I wish them to go through my pain for a few days and see what they have to say after that.
I know someone else who goes through life with a tit-for-tat or quid pro quo mentality. If this person gives you a gift she expects a gift in return of equal value. That is not true giving. If you are sick and this person calls you to “see how you are” and leaves a message to that effect on your answering machine, and you don’t call that person back to say thank you, then she cries. And her husband then calls you to say how upset his wife is because you didn’t call her back, that she’s crying. How can they compare their feelings which are totally selfish and based in insecurity and passive aggression or the need to feel loved? It’s like comparing someone with his limb severed to a person with a splinter in their hand. WTF is wrong with people.
Even people who have actually gone through short periods of depression will soon forget have bad it is because it’s gone, and we humans have a natural ability to forget pain after some time. I know someone who was having some trouble with anxiety and depression. It was very hard for that person, but didn’t have suicidal ideations. I certainly felt sympathy for him. I tried to offer whatever I could in terms of listening or advice from my experience. Eventually this person went to his General Practitioner for anti-depressants. DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! WARNING! DANGER! DANGER! ASS HOLE GP DISPENSING ANTI-DEPRESSANTS! That should be illegal and now I have a subject for another of my rants. Not all of my posts are rants. Rants hopefully will only be a small part of this blog, because I am looking to give you useful thoughts. But what’s a blog without some rants? So my friend was proscribed a SSNRI (serotonin and neurepinephon reuptake inhibiter) at the “recommended dose”. Basically the doctor used a sledge hammer instead of a the proper tool. So my friend got into serious depression. After coming out of it, he expressed to me that he now understood the pain that I had been in and now felt that to see me live for some many years like that is not something he wanted to see. He could not understand and accept if I were to end my own live at that time. I’m sorry that my friend had to endure that pain, and thank God he got off of those meds. However, unfortunately is now too scared of antidepressants to try anything reasonable from a trained professional with a proven track record who specialized in treating mood disorders. Put the point that I was trying to make was that he too will soon forget what it felt like to be in that much pain and how that pain stays with you no matter what joyfulness and blessings my surround you.
So all of you people who know sadness, who know anger, who know frustration, who know “being down”, “feeling off”, having “the blues”, missing someone, and perhaps even grieving someone, is say this: Don’t judge me and don’t judge anyone else who suffers from the mental illness called Depression, because you have no idea what it’s like. You have no basis for comparison. We are much stronger than you could ever hope to be. Maybe you know something called Dysthymia, maybe. But you don’t know depression.