distressedSince then, people have contacted me via email (when they had it), via my old email (which I rarely check), via my contact form, via Facebook, and via my Tumblr, to give me their phone numbers, to tell me not to hurt myself (which I did not threaten to do), to provide crisis hotlines, to make suggestions about medication (which I did not solicit), and in one case, to threaten to report me to the police as a suicide risk if I did not update my blog immediately to show that I was still alive.
Please. Stop. "Comment amnesty" did not mean "work harder to make sure that your words, your well wishes, your specific need to engage with my depression will be heard." I try to keep open dialogs on this blog, and I usually appreciate communication, but right now, this contact is intrusive, and upsetting, and seems to prioritize the needs of the contacting person above mine. Please. Stop.
This is why I do not talk when I am sad.
January 13 2014, 02:55:17 UTC 3 years ago
Depression is a dangerous thing, all the moreso because people who want to help are likely to hurt more than they help. One of the most unintentionally harmful things someone can ask of a depressed person is "what's wrong" or "why are you so sad", because it forces you to verbalize things you've been avoiding. There are those moments when I feel like if one more person asks me why I'm in a depressive state of mind, I will respond because I am a useless waste of flesh who doesn't deserve to keep breathing and jump into a river that very moment. There are certain things that stop me - largely the fact that I put obligations ahead of my own personal mood and welfare - but those are double-edged swords because the very things that convince me not to take steps that would harm myself are the very things that make me feel like I deserve and/or need it in the first place.
To paraphrase a Facebook post I made earlier today, for a mixture of self-motivation and for a vague hope that someone on my Facebook would indicate some understanding, depression is a state where the smallest thing - a thought, a slight change in body chemistry, a moment or idea - can hurtle you off the edge of a cliff in an instant, and only through a blend of hard work and time can you eventually get back to the top of the cliff for the cycle to repeat. One rarely knows what exactly will help or hurt in the journey to climb past the cliff, as it varies person to person and situation to situation, but shoving someone against the cliff wall and demanding that they stay away from the ravine at the bottom is rarely going to do anything more useful than cause a climber to lose their grip, whether we're speaking literally or metaphorically. I suppose the proper way to continue this metaphor is to indicate that I am offering you trail mix on our perspective climbs, with the intention that it will give us both the energy to avoid falling in, and knowing full well that even those intending to throw a rope to help with the climb more often result in someone scrambling to catch that rope and falling until they can do so.
The only thing I can ask, then, is raisin, or chocolate?
January 13 2014, 15:19:43 UTC 3 years ago