This is what depression looks like

So it’s been a while, sorry about that. Life gets in the way, and Bill’s come before blogs. (Is that the new hashtag? #billsbeforeblogs hahaha!) But I was looking for a place to doodle and stumbled on my old sketchbook from high school. It was full. But I am doodling on the backs of pages. My latest creation is kinda fun. A pagan outlook on life, the energy connecting all living things

But I started looking through and realized my depression has been my oldest acquaintance, I was simply in denial that it was truly depression, evidenced by this page:

The hard to read pencil under the green says “but that’s just child’s play” and obviously I knew something was wrong when I wrote “wouldn’t you hate to know what someone thinks of you after reading your diary?” (I have long considered my sketchbooks my diary) and clearly in denial when I wrote “I know this must make me look depressed” make. me. LOOK. Depressed. Well, teenage me, I hate to tell you but since your days I have discovered that this really IS depression. Just because you had days that weren’t sad, but ranged from apathetic to actually happy on occasion doesn’t mean you weren’t fighting the real beast. It wasn’t imaginary. If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, contrary to Monty Python’s witchcraft assertions, it is, in fact, most likely a duck.

Some of the journal is silly doodles easily excused as normal (ish) teenage stuff that wouldn’t have you question any more than my idea that I could draw

A few that may have you believing in my potential as an artist

And even one that was actually decently impressive

But over whelmingly, to anyone who simply stumbled upon this journal, it looks like one of a person who was not just depressed but a cutter and possibly suicidal. I have never once attempted either act, but I certainly wrote as though I did, or would at any moment. Perhaps I thought that made my emotions more artistic. I dont know. Who knows what goes on in a teenage brain, and we all soon forget or lose our self understanding of what the hell we were thinking.

I was clearly angsty and heart broken over who knows which “love of my life” crappy boyfriend a few times. But scattered throughout there are darker words written on my pages

I may not remember the day, or the reason, but I remember the emotion, and I know the last line on this page, the story ending, I wanted it to be my story. I was tired of writing it, it felt like chapter after relentless chapter was purely negative, and I couldnt see the way out

Though I have no idea about the damn blue bloods line on this page (other than I hated everyone at my nose-in-the-air, too-much-of-mommy-and-daddys-money school) I know I was pining away for the simpler times of childhood (the top left corner is the cootie shot rhyme) I felt out of my mind, and like every emotional part of life was too complicated (spiral reads “simplicity went down the drain with insanity”) I clearly hated societal standards (“society melted and the world was at peace”) and I cant say that the dragon’s strength line was about a person at all, but about life in general.

Apparently experiencing jealousy I wrote this page

“Goodbye goodbye turn out the lights” was a line from a poem I had written, equally dark but almost child like in it’s metaphors, but the worst of the page is what is marked out on the right hand side. Below “and then he said he never really loved me” I had written “so I showed him how much I always loved him” again, I have no idea which boy, if any, this was about. Life seemed more a cruel lover to me, than a force flowing through us all, at the time. Though it may be hard to tell the doodle below the crossed out lines is a razor blade with a drop of blood. My meaning was pretty clear regardless of if it was about a boy or life.

I truly was reminding myself of how ugly I thought I was both inside and out with this page:

This one is hard to read from after years took their toll on the graphite but just feels sad to me. In order from top to bottom:

“But then I found the truth and you only wanted to use me”

“And I always thought you were so beautiful”

“Cant you read the writing on the wall?”

“Why must you make me feel this way”

“Cant you make the pain go away”

“When were you going to tell me it was over”

“I used to think it was something obvious. But i have been over all that”

Sometimes i almost tried encouraging myself:

“The future can hold all…or nothing. It’s just the next step away

Just hold your breath and take the next step

It’s not for fate to decide. But dont tempt her.”

But i would promptly write about expressing myself through scars I never had (physically)

Often, even now, I would hit a point in my depression where I would tighten my metaphorical bootstraps, become determined, and decide to fight even if it was through spite. The top of this sketch, where the picture is cut off, says “just wipe away the tears”

This is a poem I wrote in the journal:

Rise and shine
Open up those sleepy eyes
It’s all the same
Riding on the deception train

And the faucet drips

Another lonely heart, lost
At lovers selfish cost
Same ol’ same sad little life
Another soul lost to the strife

And the faucet drips

No maintenance man for the soul
No miner digging out the coal
“This boy will do…”
It’s never true

and the faucet drips.

Same ol’ same
Over and over again
Another day
Pain another way

And the faucet drips.

But most of all, THIS is what depression looks like:

The questions I list are numerous and I will do my best to find and decipher them all:

“Why

-would you lead me to believe the things I believe

-is the voice in my head so meek

-do I care? Dont you?

-dont you just talk to me?

-would you take something away so swiftly, so unfairly?

-is why so hard to understand

-are you so cruel?

-would you torture me

-do I have ambitions? Hopes? dreams? Love?

-is this world so dark

-cant I really Express what I want to say

-are you sadistic

-cant I stop caring

-would you do the horrible things you do

-did you give me such a big heart just to give it so much pain?

-does the next thing always feel like the breaking point

-cant you make it stop hurting

-would you show me the beauty joy and happiness I can have then constantly threaten to take it away

-cant I fix things

-cant I be less…me

-have you done this

-is it all so hard

-cant you let something be for 5 minutes

”

The adjoining page asks what the color of ecstacy is, then what the color of hatred is and asks more why questions, most of which are too faded to read.

My journal is what depression looks like. It isn’t all pure darkness, and it isn’t pretty. And it is alot of questions. Then I knew something was wrong and didn’t know what. I clearly chalked it up to bad experience followed by bad experience, now I know what it is, and I am aware of my extremeisms and can use my awareness to fight, but one thing has clearly never changed: depression leaves you with a plethora of questions. Both reasonable and unreasonable. With or without awareness. Why me? Why now? Why this? why. Why. WHY?