God don't give nuthin out for free

[olddirtyspatula]

I don't actually believe in God.

 

I have a good friend who struggles with depression, suicidal thoughts, etc. Recently we were having an in-depth conversation trying to understand each other's thought patterns. Actually I was trying to understand hers better because I had been thinking about my time with my ex, who also struggled with depression. I tried to understand him, but so often I just felt confused and frustrated at my many failures to do the right thing for him and being surprised by his responses.

 

Anyway, she told me that just 2 days prior she'd had a 3 hour long crying fit over the 1986 Challenger explosion. Then she said. "Why would I cry about that? I'm not even a ****ing astronaut."

 

I can't relate to that. People who don't struggle with depression, whose brains don't work in the same way, we try to relate and we think we can relate because we've cried before, because we've had times where we felt down, but I don't think it's possible for me to cry like that about something that has nothing to do with me, let alone uncontrollably for 3 hours.The only time I've ever had anything remotely like that is shortly after my close friend killed herself when we were 19. I was a basket case for a couple of months, but only for a couple of months, and the other things happened and I was able to think about that instead. So I will never truly understand a depressed person, because I have never, and cannot, feel this way. When people with different brain chemistry tell them it's a choice we don't know how wrong we are. Why would they choose to feel that way? "Oh yeah, happiness and fulfillment, that sounds great. No I think I'll sit in my car and cry about dead astronauts for 3 hours, but maybe next time..." We wouldn't tell people suffering from any other chemical imbalance that they chose it, why do we make depressed people feel even worse by doing it to them?

 

I used to work in a mental institution. There was one woman who was suicidal, but also hysterically upset by a delusion that her colon had died inside of her and she only had 24 hours to live. To a chemically balanced person we think, "haaa you want to kill yourself and now your colon did the work for you. Problem solved, why are you crying?" but she felt the pain of both simultaneously, lamenting that she only had 24 hours to live and no one cared, and that made her so miserable she wanted to kill herself.

 

I also knew a woman there who could take the crappy watercolors you give a child, the ones we give to pre schoolers, and paint photorealistic portraits of people. You would walk by it and know exactly who she had painted because it looked exactly like them, not just some vague painting of a pretty blonde woman. She was so talented. But she also suffered from hallucinations and delusions, and the only thing that made them go away was medication that made her incontinent. So she can be crazy or she can be lucid but with **** in her pants and be afraid to leave the house because she can't control it.

 

Every depressed person I've been close to has been much smarter than I am. More sensitive, thoughtful, and funnier too. They're lots more than I am. Hence the subject. Nothing comes for free. I'm not as smart as they are but I'm blessed with a short memory. I just don't get those same nagging, persistent, inescapable low feelings that they do. I have the power to put my bad feelings in a box and feel them when I have time to, and my feelings aren't felt as intensely as theirs are. I wish they had the same power to put their **** in a box, because just with the handful of people like this that I know, I can't even imagine how much better the world would be if only they had ability to get out of their bed, house, etc, and do something with what they've got. I don't want that to sound like a judgement, I'm just marveling. The world is impacted by the mediocre efforts of myself and people like me while the best are hiding away in their homes biding their time until they self destruct. It's unfortunate.

[rogerwaters]

A depressed person does not choose to be that way, voluntarily. Depression occurs due to genetic predisposition and unfortunate life instances.

 

Power has got nothing to do with this. Don't you think that they want to feel like other people do? But, the point is that they can't control how they feel. If they did, they wouldn't be depressed in the first place.