How Hard It Really Is: A Short, Honest Book About Depression

by J.S. Park

Depression is a rumor, until it is reality, and then it's as if nothing else was ever real.

Depression is, when you're in it, absolutely ridiculous, because it seems to be the most important thing in the world when it's happening. At the same time, it robs the world of any importance, as if nothing could ever happen again. It is a nightmare of infinity wrapped in cellophane.

Depression is, when you're in it, absolutely ridiculous, because it seems to be the most important thing in the world when it's happening. At the same time, it robs the world of any importance, as if nothing could ever happen again. It is a nightmare of infinity wrapped in cellophane.

It's a liar that sells truth: a false reality that says how-I-feel is who-I-really-am. And when a grafted lie overruns the truth, it doesn't matter that I have "every reason" to be fine: the lie has switched every goalpost and sunk the baseline.

It's a liar that sells truth: a false reality that says how-I-feel is who-I-really-am.

It is cold inertia, slowing down worlds in orbit. It leaves you carved open, constantly bleeding out, unable to retain the vital stuff that makes life. There's spiritual discombobulation; every emotion is a phantom limb, and no amount of affirmation about "life-gets-better" can reach me there.

It is cold inertia, slowing down worlds in orbit. It leaves you carved open, constantly bleeding out, unable to retain the vital stuff that makes life. There's spiritual discombobulation; every emotion is a phantom limb, and no amount of affirmation about "life-gets-better" can reach me there.

Depression can feel like a solo sport. There's no team backing you up.

Depression can feel like a solo sport. There's no team backing you up.

individualized isolation was very vacuum-ish to me. Life doesn't work in such a frictionless shrink-wrap. We affect others in a causational web

a lifelong whisper on my shoulder feeding poison in my ear—but as familiar as it is, I've found it hard to show others that it's really there.

lifelong whisper on my shoulder feeding poison in my ear—but

Depression thrives on its unrelenting invisibility, creating a fatal cycle in which its own camouflage is the very mechanism by which it destroys. It thrives by hiding. It feels silly to bring up depression, which is isolating—and to feel isolated often feeds into the isolation, which is depression's most insidious strategy.

Depression thrives on its unrelenting invisibility, creating a fatal cycle in which its own camouflage is the very mechanism by which it destroys. It thrives by hiding.

- A two ton weight that follows you around. It constantly holds up a mirror to the past. It keeps a log of all the abandonment, pressure, loss, rage, and loneliness, and constantly tries to break the record. It always says you're not good enough.

Spiraling circles of powerlessness.

Spiraling circles of powerlessness. You think something can change, and right when you think it will, you turn around and realize you're headed right back to where you came from.

It feels like forever while it's there and as though it never happened when it's over.

It feels like forever while it's there and as though it never happened when it's over.

It felt like I had the floor under my feet, then the floor broke and I fell. Then I felt like I landed on another lower floor. Just when I thought I was better, I'd fall even further. - It feels like the question, Why?

It feels like the question, Why?

depression is a fog in which I collapse inward and lose all sense of myself.

depression is a fog in which I collapse inward and lose all sense of myself.

I start to stumble when I walk, or become unable to walk in a straight line. I am more clumsy and accident-prone. In depression you become, in your head, two-dimensional—like a drawing rather than a living, breathing creature. You cannot conjure your actual personality, which you can remember only vaguely ... You live in, or close to, a state of perpetual fear, although you are not sure what it is you are afraid of.

In depression you become, in your head, two-dimensional—like a drawing rather than a living, breathing creature. You cannot conjure your actual personality, which you can remember only vaguely ... You live in, or close to, a state of perpetual fear, although you are not sure what it is you are afraid of.

My Broken Brain Doesn't Get Your Broken Brain

I believe the dilemma with describing depression happens because: 1) When it's expressed, it's often hand-waved as nothing more than "sadness" or "introversion" or "laziness." 2) Unless someone has experienced depression, then reaching out is usually ineffectual. It's like describing the Mojave to a polar bear.

Yet describing depression can feel pathetic and pointless, even with a shared well of vocabulary. A patient with cancer is treated much differently than a patient with depression, even though both diagnoses can lead to a terminal result.

Yet describing depression can feel pathetic and pointless, even with a shared well of vocabulary. A patient with cancer is treated much differently than a patient with depression, even though both diagnoses can lead to a terminal result.

Dark, Unknowable Void

the unspoken wall between all human connection in that we are each "alone" in our own heads, never fully known as we are.

it exists in an uncanny valley of unreality where it's never fully knowable.

it exists in an uncanny valley of unreality where it's never fully knowable. Eventually, there's a threshold in which depression cannot be fully articulated, no matter how much you try. It is dark matter, swirling in dead space, pushing on orbits without a trace.

"I was trying to describe it to her, and she was like, 'I think you're depressed'—and a light bulb went off. 'Is that what this is?' I just thought the world was heavy and no one was sharing the weight."[12] — Baron Vaughn

"I was trying to describe it to her, and she was like, 'I think you're depressed'—and a light bulb went off. 'Is that what this is?' I just thought the world was heavy and no one was sharing the weight."[12] — Baron Vaughn

And if depression at its center is truly unknowable, then it was never your fault that you couldn't describe your depression.

then it was never your fault that you couldn't describe your depression.

powerful happens when we reach across the dark.

something powerful happens when we reach across the dark.

I hope you will not hide. I hope you will find a friend you can trust and tell them what's happening inside. They might not get it. Tell them again. Or find another. And try again.

I hope you will not hide. I hope you will find a friend you can trust and tell them what's happening inside. They might not get it. Tell them again. Or find another. And try again.

"In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets."[16] — C.S. Lewis

"In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets."

If you're either at the edge of depression or thinking of harming yourself right now, please don't hesitate to call a friend. If they don't answer, leave a long message. You might be surprised that it helps. Also, I love you, dear friend, and you are loved.

"I'm just ... nowhere. And somewhere else. Like the thing with Zeno's arrow. Moving at a dead stop."

Anxiety, manic, dependency, prone to grandeur and hyperbole, of no volition to change, typical teen angst common for his age.

I look down. I have a pen cap and I'm trying to open my wrists, frantic scrawls in fast diagonals, yet methodically somehow, and I'm not really sure why but tears have carved my face

I'm nowhere and everywhere, two places at once, Schrödinger's joke,

I get this flash of my mom calling me stupid and my dad calling me never, and I walk away from the stairs and lie down on the floor under the side of the coffee table and I remember being fifteen again and I shut my eyes hard enough to see stars.

I'm smiling, but the sides of my lips are cutting into my cheeks and I don't remember how I got here