Yeah, pretty much. When I make it through another day, I am surviving.

I’ve been living with diagnosed depression for almost 20 years, but since it was diagnosed at that time as Long-Term Chronic Depression with a probable onset in my toddler years, we’ll just go with “my whole life.” (almost 46 years) Also, I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I attribute my depression and anxiety to a lovely cocktail of influences: parental neglect, emotional detachment, childhood incest, a highly-sensitive nervous system, and a genetic predisposition toward depression and anxiety. (Hey, at least there is a cocktail involved!)

Depression and Anxiety aren’t what I want to discuss here, but they are the backdrop of my life. I silently survive from day to day to day, and no one gives me a ribbon for making it another day, another month, or another year. Only other depression survivors understand the miracle of making it through each bout of depression alive, and sometimes those bouts are indistinguishable from daily life. If I had a “real” sickness, people would bring me casseroles and offer to help me however they could. Most people don’t see depression as a “real sickness” though, and I get offers of… well nothing. I don’t get offers of help or casseroles or sympathy. I get judgement, shame, criticism, guilt, etc.  It makes me never good enough. I take medication. The medication helps me remember to do things (that would never get done without it), but I have to remember to take it. I have to remember to refill it. I have to remember to pick up the refill. Taking a pill to help you remember to take a pill is all kinds of fucked up, and when I forget, I get shame and disapproval. “I THOUGHT YOU HAD THAT FIGURED OUT.” …. well, I thought so too, but OBVIOUSLY, I WAS WRONG.

I don’t want to be Debbie Downer here, just give you a little lens to view me through. I’d like to be funny. Sometimes I am. You may not see it that way. I have a pretty twisted, fucked-up sense of humor, but I know I’m not the only one, thank God. Even if no one in my personal life is that way, I see evidence of it all over the internet, and that gives me hope that someone, somewhere, understands me.