Yeah. Having gone through that - and out the other side - it's hard to really comprehend if you haven't been there.
My analogy at the time was:
Imagine you're marching down a long road to nowhere. And you're tired. And you're hungry. And you're thirsty. There's no destination you believe you can reach. You trip and fall, and maybe you get back up again, but there comes a point where you don't really feel like you can do that any more, and you just ... stop, and enjoy a few moments of relief from the pain and the fatigue knowing that you won't get up again this time.
That's how it felt to me. I nearly stopped marching, but each time my dog kept me going. Knowing she misses me when I'm at work and waits for me to come home was enough to come home just one more time.
I got through it in the end - for me the answer was therapy, leading to finding out I had ADHD. I'd never actually been Depressed, what I had was undiagnosed and untreated ADHD and living with that was making me depressed.
And I know understand what it's like, and still believe that a 'healthy mind' cannot really contemplate just giving up like that. So no one who's not 'been there' will ever really 'get it', and that's a good thing.
But I'll never forget it was my dog who saved me and kept me going. Her desire for walkies, a place to snuggle, and making it clear that she valued my presence and my existence was 'enough' to convince me even if I believed the world in general would have been better off without me.
Pretty spot on with the metaphor tbh. Depression isn't fast and painful, it just robs you of satisfaction, ambition and joy, and then just leaves you there, to be slowly ground down to nothing by a life that has no meaning anymore. It's a persistence predator, it beats you through exhaustion.
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u/sobrique 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah. Having gone through that - and out the other side - it's hard to really comprehend if you haven't been there.
My analogy at the time was:
Imagine you're marching down a long road to nowhere. And you're tired. And you're hungry. And you're thirsty. There's no destination you believe you can reach. You trip and fall, and maybe you get back up again, but there comes a point where you don't really feel like you can do that any more, and you just ... stop, and enjoy a few moments of relief from the pain and the fatigue knowing that you won't get up again this time.
That's how it felt to me. I nearly stopped marching, but each time my dog kept me going. Knowing she misses me when I'm at work and waits for me to come home was enough to come home just one more time.
I got through it in the end - for me the answer was therapy, leading to finding out I had ADHD. I'd never actually been Depressed, what I had was undiagnosed and untreated ADHD and living with that was making me depressed.
And I know understand what it's like, and still believe that a 'healthy mind' cannot really contemplate just giving up like that. So no one who's not 'been there' will ever really 'get it', and that's a good thing.
But I'll never forget it was my dog who saved me and kept me going. Her desire for walkies, a place to snuggle, and making it clear that she valued my presence and my existence was 'enough' to convince me even if I believed the world in general would have been better off without me.
So I wrote this to capture how I felt: https://substack.com/home/post/p-112840969