I believe intelligence and depression go hand in hand. we think way too much and we see life as it really is. anyone who is able to see all this pain and wrong in the world would get depressed about it. but we also get depressed because of all the beautiful things in nature, as we know nothing in this world is forever, every person, every story, every moment has an ending.
respectfully, screw this.
like, impale it to the wall with an effing broadsword because this is some poisonous crap right here.
as someone who has been clinically depressed for at least half her life (it’s difficult to tell, because a lot of my depression is wrapped up in my many other neuroatypicalities, some of which were, in retrospect, present in toddlerhood), I think I can pretty definitively say: depression is not insight. depression is not because of some special snowflake sensitivity. depression is not seeing all the cruelty and beauty of the world with preternatural wisdom and grieving over the transience of it all. depression kills you.
depression is an outside force that warps your understanding and takes away the things that make you yourself.
depression sure as all hell does not make me see life as it really is. depression exacerbates my apathy, my paranoia, my self-loathing; it makes me physically and psychologically confused and unable to follow through with basic tasks sometimes. depression sometimes makes it impossible for me to enjoy the things that make my life worth living; it takes away my ability to feel and give and receive love; to be angry; depression even steals my ability to grieve. that sounds like a paradox — depression means sad, right? but depression goes beyond sad, into dark places of sabotage and debilitating apathy, where I can barely think clearly enough to feed myself or get out of bed, even when life is offering me good things, even when there is no possible tangible reason for me to feel so empty that nothing tastes good to me any more.
and the thing is, myths about depression being this magic sensitivity, where you grieve poetically about the universe, is actively damaging. you know what people with mental illnesses constantly do, despite all facts? doubt ourselves. we constantly doubt that there’s anything wrong, that it must be all in our heads, that we’re just making things hard for ourselves, that we’re just standard-issue failures. the funny part is the sheer level and irrationality of our self-doubt should be evidence enough to convince us that what is wrong with us is something much bigger than us, but, as always: depression kills you.
when you’re told depression makes you create, write poetry, make art, that it attunes you to some secret truth of the universe, the fact that you can’t get yourself out of the damn bed any more and you haven’t washed your hair in five days and you used to live for writing but your ability to create has been obliterated tells you that you’re not really depressed, that you have failed even at this. it’s insulting, sabotaging, and poisonous, and it needs to stop.
