For me, depression is a living, ever-changing creature that impacts each and every aspect of my life. I can not, no matter how I try, ever avoid depression and its grip on me. I don’t understand it and I can’t defeat it. I try to outwit it and live my life, but what I really spend my time doing is just existing…from hour to hour…day to day…year to year. I have no past because of depression. I look back over my life and I see nothing but emptiness, failure and loneliness. I look at the future and I see the same. There is no hope and though I try to remain positive, I know that I am kidding myself. There is no hope or salvation for me. I will not be one of the lucky who escape depression’s grip.

Each day is an ordeal, a battle to remain ‘normal’…a battle to remain on top of the water’s surface one more hour, one more day. I get up. I go to bed. In between, evidently, something happens…I may or may not remember–or care. It really doesn’t matter anymore. I look at my life and I don’t care. I occasionally hope and dream, but I know that I can never be happy or reach my dreams. What is the point? Loneliness and despair will be my life companions. I need to stop my foolish dreaming.

I look at my life and wonder “why me?”. What have I done to deserve to be punished like this?

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Depression for me is that heavy feeling I have in my chest whenever I look out at the world. It’s the pressure of the unshed tears just waiting for somebody to let loose for me. It’s the feeling that all someone has to do is point out that I’ve done something incorrectly and I need to start over again and I’ll sit down right there and bawl.

Depression for me sends me to bed whenever it hits because the only way I’ve discovered that lets me forget the bad feelings is sleep. All I want to do is run away from me and be somebody else somewhere else.

I wish I had a theory of what could possible help. I’ve only recently begun to face the depression. I had high hopes that medication would solve all my problems and turn me into a normal essentially happy person, but my first try didn’t work. Now I’m taking Valium for the anxiety and I’m back to dealing with the depression my way…by sleeping. Of everything I’ve read, researched and heard about treating depression, it seems my way is the most effective. Just go to sleep until it all blows over by itself.

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I felt lifeless, as though I am doing this and that without any particular meaning attached to it. Occasionally I laughed but my spirits quickly got dampened. I had this “Who am I?” feeling. Most importantly, didnt feel like I used to be. I knew it was different a while before then but what happened? What happened to my usual buoyant and cheerful self? It was very difficult to think, its as though the blinds have been drawn on my gray cells. There are times when I could see through the haze and fog and felt like I used to be, only to be quickly removed from that scene by evil thoughts that resulted in anxiety.

The fact that we are all going to die and everything I do is meaningless anyways, bothered me. So, I will be gone some years hence, I wasnt there a few years before, so who the hell am I and what am I doing here? This is the vicious circle I got caught in.

There was this disconnected feeling, i.e, I have to instruct myself to do something. Then I will go ahead and do it. I kept myself under constant scrutiny. Then I wondered how I used to be. There was something else between thought and action. The glue that binds thoughts, feelings and action must be life and the lack of must be what is commonly known as depression.