The Depression Paradox

You might have seen my IG-stories from today about how feeling depressed and suicidal is a tangled mess of contradicting feelings and thoughts where your actions feel like cries for help which no one hears but then again, even if they do hear them and ask you what’s going on you still probably won't tell them because you feel like a burden.

So here’s a little personal update on that and some more thoughts. And I’ll preface them by saying that I personally have a problem with admitting to people that something might be going wrong in my life. I’m that friend who probably won’t be complaining much, or will beat themselves up if they end up complaining, and I also tend to publicly address own failures with jokes and laughter.

I suppose, at some point in my childhood I reasoned that everyone has their own problems so it’s inconsiderate to complain. Fast forward to me finally realizing at the age of 22 that I have an unhealthy behavioural pattern of being very zen on the surface level but then somehow having a nervous breakdown every two months. What I've come to understand was that I tend to not realize that I actually still worry about things but, since I do that subconsiously, I can't address my stresses and deal with them constructively. It all ultimately bottles up thanks to the fact that I don't share it with other people. And last Sunday I had a meltdown again. Because I had been worrying again while being completely silent about it.

I've been stressing about exams, money, my master's thesis and so many other things lately but I never told my friends about it. Because, well, I never do. And the reason I'm writing this blog post right now is that today, after I felt extremely depressed once again and was thinking about mortality and suicide as possible answers to me feeling like my life is overflowing with problems I'll never be able to solve, I made a giant leap. I actually reached out to a friend myself.

I texted him saying that I feel suicidal and I really need help and really need someone to hear me out and asked him if it'd be cool with him if I vented and my problems because I have a lot of pressure bottled up. It was really uncomfortable at first because at moments like these rejection is the worst possible response, if someone admits being suicidal - never, ever, ever, ever reject them opening up about that. You might be the only straw this person is grasping before letting go of life completely. Be responsible about how you meet their effort to talk.

But ultimately this experience was incredibly liberating for me because it's the first time I explicitly asked for help and explicitly was told by someone I was friends with in real life that yes, text me about your problems any time you feel like it, and no, you are not a burden, and I trust you that you will not hurt yourself. Can you even imagine how good hearing that feels?

So this is where I'm at right now. I went for it and got very lucky because my friend was willing to listen to me and, even more than that, he was willing to do it on my terms: since he's a very task-oriented guy I told him that I just need someone to listen and to be there, it's not necessary to try to provide a solution for everything, just listening is already major. And so he did. And I am so grateful.