On Depression

Today, Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington was found dead after an apparent suicide. His friend, Chris Cornell, hung himself in May. Chris would have been 53 today. Chester sang "Hallelujah" at Chris' funeral. Two musicians. Two suicides. Two people who were very sad with their lives. Or, were they?

Here's what depression is NOT: It's not sad. There's this stigma around depression that people who are depressed are just sad all the time. That if they choose to do so, they can pull themselves out of it and choose to be happy. The truth is that depressed people can be happy. They can also be sad. They can be terrified, lonely, joyous and even elated. But, here's the real deal with depression: it's always there. So, even when you are happy, you're not all happy.

Depression is a nagging little sister pulling at the back of your shirt waiting to be acknowledged. And the acknowledgement is different for everyone. Some acknowledge the little sister by trying to shut her up. They drink or do drugs to feel numb, so that the little sister is quieted if only for just a little while. There's also acknowledgment in just going to sleep. If you sleep, you can't hear the nagging little sister. And when you sleep, it's safer anyway. When you're a depressed person, you have to hide the nagging little sister, which is nearly impossible and the efforts it takes to do that are exhausting. If you sleep, you don't need to deal with the little sister. And when you sleep, you are sleeping because you are exhausted from your efforts to keep her quiet so that people don't notice her. When people notice, it's shameful. You don't want to have the nagging little sister around anymore because she is exhausting for you, but more than that, she is exhausting for everyone you know and love. So, you fake it. You balance it. You acknowledge the nagging little sister just enough to keep her in check, while having to hide her so that others don't know she's there, because, let's face it, she's one Hell of a burden. And, you don't want that for those around you. So, you smile and you fake it.

This is where anxiety comes in. You become anxious because you know the challenge that you face each day with this quartet of action: the nagging sister, the sleeping, the burden, the people around you. The anxiety and the nagging little sister of depression are sometimes too much for one to bear. So, what do you do with all of that? You numb it. You shut it up. You push it down until you can't feel it anymore; until you can't hear the nagging or feel the weight of the anxiety pressing down on your shoulders and wrapping itself around your back, finally encompassing you in it's melody of catastrophic circumstance.

How do you numb it? For one, you don't talk about it. After that, you may take pills. Or drink. Or smoke. Or hurt yourself in some way. And the depressed person knows. They know that these are temporary fixes. They are aware that these bandaids are not permanent and will fall off, sooner rather than later. Though temporary, they are better than nothing. Because the alternative is to have the battle all the time. And that, is not an option, until, it becomes the only option. When that happens, it means that the drugs, the booze, all of the bandaids have stopped working. Nothing will numb you anymore. The nagging little sister takes over. And she brings anxiety. And she refuses to be hidden.

I can only speculate that this is what happened to Chester, and maybe Chris. The bandaids quit working. Because, the thing with depression is that it's always there, not just at 3:00am. It's there at 3:00pm when you're in mid conversation with friends and laughing until suddenly...you're not. So, no, you can't just choose to be happy. Depression does not allow for that. You have no choice. Your only choices are in how to treat the depression so that, in time, she will quiet down and eventually go away. And hopefully she will take the anxiety with her. Anxiety is when you care too much about everything. Depression is when you don't really care about anything. Having both is like Hell.