Is a Little Empathy Too Much to Ask For?

Today I am lamenting over friends who just don't understand. If you're clinically depressed, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the friends who think you are lazy, that you need to buck up. Those friends who, regardless of how many times you have explained the many symptoms of depression, think it's just about being sad.

Yes, there is sadness. There is also anger, anxiety, lack of concentration, too much sleep, too little sleep, too much hunger, too little hunger.... but it's not just sloth and gluttony. Yes, I still have my free will. But the problem is, when I wake up in the morning (or afternoon, or evening), I don't want to be conscious. It hurts. I'm not necessarily talking body aches and pains, although it seems like sometimes I do wake up with a headache or general physical ickiness that makes me want to retreat back into my dreams. I'm talking about an all-consuming sorrow. It's as if I've woken up to realize that my best friend has died. Fortunately this is not the case. But it's that magnitude of grief on the bad days, and I don't always know why. And yes, sometimes when I get up, and pass that threshold of pain upon first waking, I realize there is no real source of the sadness. Sometimes I do buck up, and feel better, and thank the heavens for the beautiful day. But sometimes I just wish, all day long, that I hadn't listened to the voice of reason that told me I should get up.

Sometimes anxiety consumes me, and I spend the whole day chasing my thoughts about a stressful situation around and around in my head. It's not the useful sort of thinking, where I contemplate solutions, and rational decisions are made. It's the kind of thinking that slowly deteriorates into totally irrational thoughts. At the beginning of the day, I might be thinking about how my best friend has not been online this month, and the fact that he sometimes marks himself as showing offline to get work done. By the end of the day, I've convinced myself that he has marked himself offline to avoid me, and that something I said at some point offended me. I've convinced myself that he doesn't really like me at all, and just puts up with me for his wife's sake. I've convinced myself that I should have seen this last year, and I start to see patterns in his behavior. And the hard thing is, because I seem to be less observant when I am my most depressed, I might have in reality have offended him and not noticed it. So I tell myself this is anxiety, and that I am being irrational, and I talk to this friend, and he assures me it is not personal. But I don't believe him. Because I've seen a pattern. And I have a tendency to expect the worst. Because why would anyone want to be friends with me? I bug the crap out of myself.

This is the week I've had. I have a close friend who refuses to help me wake up for church, which I keep sleeping through, and which is important to me. She seems to think that the fact that I sleep through it is an indicator that I am not as devoted to my faith as she is. She seems to think that I am choosing not to go to church because sleep is more important. In reality, my sleep schedule is so messed up I don't know where to start to fix it. I'm not working right now, so a bedtime is a little silly. There is nothing to wake up for the next day. Even when I try to correct my schedule, my thoughts race and my hearts race and my muscles ache. I cannot sleep when I want to. When I do manage to relax and go to sleep, I sleep for far too long, and I fight wakefulness, for the reasons described above. So when Sunday rolls around, it is doubly hard to rouse myself at the right time, and get myself to church. And when I do succeed in attending, all of the people annoy me, and all the happiness makes me want to wretch. In my rational mind, I see that they are, for the most part, not annoying. And that I am incredibly angry. And that no one understands, which makes me hate them more.

So, dear friend, I say to you here, where you will never read: educate yourself. If you have a depressed friend, it might be me. And I am telling you, your inability to show compassion makes me feel that much more freakish. Learn about the symptoms, maybe watch a movie or two, and try to put yourself in my shoes. I already am disgusted enough with myself. I don't need your judgement.