I’ve suffered from depression for years. It runs in the family, and the more I experience life, the more I’m convinced that it is biological. This is a difficult thing for me to acknowledge, because for the most part I am someone who believes that things like depression are the result of our choices, thinking, or unresolved psychological issues. Having been someone who’s done some really deep psychological work, who has completely changed his way of thinking and perceiving the world, and who worked hard to make positive choices in his life, I still notice depression occurs regardless of circumstances. I could be content with life, going through some tough times, or even on cloud nine, and depression can rear its ugly head. At the same time, I’ve experienced those same situations, and depression stays away. This has caused me to rule out external circumstances as the sole criterion for my depression. I have also experienced a losing struggle to monitor my thinking. My entire system seems to shut down, and no matter how hard I try to talk myself away from it, it still happens. Thus, the only conclusion I can reasonably come to is that it’s biological. I can accept this, but there are other problems.
Once I am depressed, I have a nearly impossible time trying to find purpose and meaning in life, or in other words, not becoming a nihilist. Before, when I believed in God, the thought of going to h**l always prevented me from taking my own life (even then I came close a few times). Now that I don’t believe in such a thing, I am finding it more and more difficult to find reasons to stay alive when I experience depression. It is difficult for me to find a reason to go on when I suffer so much emotional pain and feelings of worthlessness and self-loathing. It becomes even more difficult the longer I live because I have a hard time seeing a point to life if the majority of it is spent in pain and misery. I find myself considering thoughts on suicide by Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Goethe, and these make it even harder to defend to myself why I should live.
Not all pain worth ending is physical. When I am depressed, I feel like a cripple, like I’m paralyzed in an existence of such debilitating emotion that it is all I can do to numb or escape. I used to use drugs for that, but I cleaned up several years ago and haven’t looked back. Even now I don’t find the idea of turning to drugs very appealing, no matter how I feel. I suppose the only thing that keeps me going is a recognition that when I’m not depressed, life is pretty enjoyable. I can go for months without feeling down, but I can also go for months of h**l in depression. That’s where I am right now.
Five days ago I googled “i want to die†to see if anything on the internet could make me feel better or give me a reason to not kill myself. There was very little that brought comfort for me. You see, in that moment, I really wanted to die. I didn’t just want the pain to end; I really wanted to die. This brought tears to my eyes because I don’t recall a time when I was so desperate. Instead of looking for the means to take my life, I threw on some NIN, crawled up on my couch hugging a pillow and slowly went to sleep. I woke up the next day feeling refreshed and ready to conquer the world. I felt that things weren’t so bad, and that I just might be able to get through these moments. But then the depression came back a day or two later. And now it’s getting more and more difficult to not become cynical over the whole thing (it’s just going to keep coming back no matter what I do). I guess at this point I’m only still alive because I haven’t done anything to end my life. Basically, I’m alive due to passive acceptance of life.
I hate the monotony of life, the same thing day in, day out. I see no point in anything, especially when I consider how we treat each other. I see the wars and contentions around the world, the slow removal of liberties and freedoms at the hand of the government, and it makes me sick. I fear we might not even survive ourselves, but then I think that we deserve no more. I fear we might soon face a world all of the conspiracy theorists predicted might come to pass, even though I laugh at them now. I fear humanity’s insignificance, but embrace my own. I fear I might actually make a significant contribution to the world, but scoff at such grandiosity. Most of all I fear that no matter what I do I will never be able to change how much I suffer emotionally during depression, that this is constant rather than mutable. It’s all just a glorified way of saying that I don’t see a point in life if that life is spent suffering.
If you’ve managed to get through all of this, kudos to you. Perhaps this is partly cathartic, but even if it is it’s still a way for me to reach out. I feel like I’m someone who’s tried a multitude of ways to figure this out (including medication, no thanks, never again), and none of them has brought me closer to a satisfactory answer. I need to find a way through this, and there has to be answers outside of religion. If there aren’t, well, I just don’t see a reason to continue a life of suffering. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Disclaimer: do no see this as an opportunity to try to convince me of your religious beliefs. I may be going through some tough things, but I will never abandon my sense of reason. Your religion is as ridiculous to me when I am depressed as it is when I am perfectly happy (not entirely true because I tend to get cynical when I’m depressed, so religion becomes even more ridiculous). Nothing will change that. p**s off if you feel you need to preach to me of God, and p**s off if you feel like telling me I deserve this for abandoning my faith. Nothing you say will change how utterly ridiculous your claims of God are. I’m not looking for conversion, I’m looking for a way to find meaning and purpose as an atheist who suffers from depression. Sorry for this, I’ve just had too many people try to tell me I’m depressed because God is trying to humble me to accept him.
X-posted: Mental Health, Religion and Spirituality
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