A Decade With Untreated Depression: The Daily Life

"But in the end, one have needed more courage to live than to kill himself."

-Albert Camus

Many questions might still have been boggling you about what am I doing and how am I really living my life. Honestly, I have been a great artist on pretending that I look fine but most of the time it fails. That has been the "wrapper" of who I really was even until now. If you followed this article from my very first blog and you realazed that you're actually feeling the same way, you probably chuckled on that because I am very sure you did that countless times already. Let me try enumerating those questions (or maybe, our questions).

Stigma: "Depression is not an illness," the majority says.

Not on my boat? Have you ever saw someone like me and told them that we're just sad or we're just having a bad day and it should pass away without even noticing over time? Have you ever told him jokingly that it was nothing more than a drama? Have you ever judged that person even by just at the back of your mind that he was just doing it to gain favor of others?

No. We don't want to be like this.

What do I do when people react negatively against my behavior I project that I can no longer contain if it happens almost everyday?

My routine is I just rush going home after school (or after work, as of today) and lock myself to my room, sweating cold and trying to endure the heaviness that was brewing inside my chest. I palpitate. I put my earphones on. I listen to my favorite song (specifically by Corrinne May, On The Side Of Me) and begin crying uncontrollably until I fall asleep. Why? Crying is the only band-aid I can only find to quickly end the agony from enduring because it drains energy faster.

No one listens the way we want to be heard whoever we approach.

What do I do when I am being apprehended aggresively because I am being labeled as a person who just overreacts to gain attention?

There was one time at my work where someone stood up against me because he was irritated on how I was behaving because he thinks that my mood has already been so contagious on the entire team. He pulled me up my table and created a sight on the entire production floor, telling me that I am not helping at all and that I am just a sore on the entire team's eyes. The next things that happened was all dark- I was running away towards the building exit with my eyes on red. I immediately took a bus and went home, extremely distraught. The pain was too unbearable it invoked me harming myself, and to my crazed surprise, I felt a strange sense of comfort when I began hurting myself as if it was a magic trick- the pain in my chest suddenly lifted away. With a clouded mind, I thought, maybe if I do this everyday I might feel the same?

Everyone begins to think we are insane. But are we?

What other measures I do everyday aside from trying to hurt yourself in extreme cases?

I indulge myself in games. Previously at school, because my parents never addressed mental problems as a real illness (they were even so reluctant on that one time when they brought me to a psychiatrist and they finally found out I have MDD because I insisted) since they think the prescription medicines will do the work anyway, they have just reassured me blindly that as time goes by I should be OK. They think that we have already spent so much money on it and I may just have been doing this to reason out being lazy and apathetic. Clearly I know during that time to myself that nothing is going OK despite the medication. I began skipping classes because I fear I'll just be bullied because of my condition (which really happened, even to the point that I got bruises on my entire limbs and a 5 series of stitches on my noseline, which my parents still have put the blame on me because I was simply being rebellious and hard-headed). I would use my money I got from them as my allowance for the day to play at a nearby gaming café and I would only stop when my eyes begin to hurt. Now at work, if my immediate supervisor permits, I do overtime for up to 4 hours or until my body cannot take it anymore.

We want to spend the energy we have desperately because we know it will drain faster if we just sit idly.

You have work and you do overtime so that means you can afford to seek professional help. You just don't want to. Right?

I am not in America nor in the UK. If I could, believe me, I could have done it already and never allowed this to last this long. I have mentioned this problem in my very first article and if you really have that interest to find the ground I am pointing at, search "Invisible Documentary Mental Health" on YouTube.

There is cure, there is help, but what if the help demands something that only causes you more agony?

Have you been able to picture out things on your mind? We, the depressed under a cruelly judging and unhelpful community, may be wrong on the majority of the eyes of those who see us because there is stigma. We can only hope that stigma dies out soon.

Can you help me raise awareness? Tell me what to do.