By Man flower
Depression is a term that gets thrown around and marketed a lot in today’s society. Some think it’s when someone is sad. Some think it’s just mental weakness to be dismissed. Others know that it’s exponentially more serious than sad and more of an intrusive assault as opposed to weakness.
For me, everything can be going great for days and weeks…and when lucky, months. And then out of nowhere like a phantom truck hitting you from the side at an intersection, everything turns dark. You feel completely alone, broken, sick, totally destroyed inside and out. You welcome death because death could not possibly be worse than this feeling. You become a helpless victim and you know that family and friends don’t want to hear about you being “sad” again. You fantasize about ways to end it all….jump off a building? No the impact seems too final….pull the trigger? Not brave enough…. Overdose on pills? Fuck that, not the way I wanna go….then you realize that, no I really don’t want to die, I just want this most horrible mental, emotional, and physical anguish to end…just a ray of light and hope would be welcomed….
Some say it’s not a chemical causation…some say you just have to pull yourself up. Some of us know that it’s absolutely unexplainable, yet more real than anything ever experienced.
A lot end it at that. Suicide is a very popular cause of death in many demographics….but I know I haven’t ended it and when the depression subsides, I’m truly grateful that I white-knuckled it.
I know that everyone is unique and no one has had the exact same experience as me, but I have learned some tricks that have helped me climb out of the abyss hundreds, maybe thousands of times.
I’m very happy to be alive today and I’m loving this sky! I will share some things that help me survive when being hit in the face with the frying pan of depression. Maybe it will help at least one person…
- Gratitude list - try to write down or say 20 things I’m grateful for no matter how trivial. …I’m grateful for my dog…I’m grateful for these trees around me…I’m grateful for having a car…I’m grateful for having a phone that can play music…I’m grateful my mom taking off work two weeks to spend time with me…Gratitude is the attitude and when I can muster gratitude for anything no matter how small, I want to stay alive.
- Exercise - sweat the evil out and make my body and mind too exhausted to be devoured by dark thoughts.
- Try to help someone or some animal - feeling useful sometimes pulls me out of the funk because I realize my life has purpose at least in some small way for some small moment
- Reach out- we are warm blooded organisms, not lizards…human interaction sometimes can distract me from the flood waters of depressive emotions just long enough to “get back on track”.
- Eat healthy food- our bodies are constantly experiencing chemical reactions, this is why saying that depression is not chemical is not helpful. Giving my body the nutrition it needs does help tremendously.
- Nature - the bugs and birds and plants aren’t depressed, they just exist. The human mind is amazing in many ways, yet being depressed to the point you want to die isn’t one of them…nature has a magical cure that I can’t explain, but I know she soothes my heart and soul.
- Be creative - often writing poems, rants, song lyrics…and playing my saxophone helps purge whatever was happening in my mind, and when I see that I created something beautiful, I feel more inclined to stay alive.
- Children and animals - again I can’t explain why, but interaction with children and animals has magical powers. I feel so fortunate to come in contact with both almost daily.
- Water - when I take a bath, something happens…maybe my muscles relax or maybe my skin is rejuvenated…I don’t know, but water has some sort of knowledge or power to truly “baptize” me. I prefer a hot bath with Epsom salt teamed up with an ice bath, I switch back and forth usually at least 3 times like the elderly have taught me at the hot spring. It constricts and contracts my muscles and nervous system and the result is always some sort of endorphin release that often saves me from the darkness.
- Meditation - this is another word often thrown around. For me I set the timer to 20:22… because it’s the year 2022…and I have the mission to focus on my breath …what the heck does that mean? Well, I breathe in my nose, breathe out my mouth, breathe in my nose again…then get bombarded by a horrible thought or a thought of some task that must get done. I then remember that I’m meditating and let the invasive thought turn into a butterfly and fly away as I return to my breathe in/breathe out mission…maybe I get two or three breaths again until I think about how no one cares about me, my life is useless, I need to pay the electric bill …then again butterfly fly away…and back to mission of focusing on my breath…it often helps and again, I can’t exactly explain why.
Anyway, I’m grateful for life this evening. I feel peaceful, mentally and physically at ease, and this sky and the rainbow I just saw affirms that staying alive is worth it….
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