(sorry can't find vid)
"Depression is humiliating. It turns
intelligent, kind people into zombies who can’t wash a dish or change their
socks. It affects the ability to think clearly, to feel anything, to ascribe
value to your children, your lifelong passions, your relative good fortune. It
scoops out your normal healthy ability to cope with bad days and bad news, and
replaces it with an unrecognizable sludge that finds no pleasure, no delight,
no point in anything outside of bed. You alienate your friends because you
can’t comport yourself socially, you risk your job because you can’t
concentrate, you live in moderate squalor because you have no energy to stand
up, let alone take out the garbage. You become pathetic and you know it. And
you have no capacity to stop the downward plunge. You have no perspective, no
emotional reserves, no faith that it will get better. So you feel guilty and
ashamed of your inability to deal with life like a regular human, which
exacerbates the depression and the isolation. If you’ve never been depressed,
thank your lucky stars and back off the folks who take a pill so they can make
eye contact with the grocery store cashier. No one on earth would choose the
nightmare of depression over an averagely turbulent normal life.
It’s not an
incapacity to cope with day to day living in the modern world. It’s an
incapacity to function. At all. If you and your loved ones have been spared,
every blessing to you. If depression has taken root in you or your loved ones,
every blessing to you, too. No one chooses it. No one deserves it. It runs in
families, it ruins families. You cannot imagine what it takes to feign
normalcy, to show up to work, to make a dentist appointment, to pay bills, to
walk your dog, to return library books on time, to keep enough toilet paper on
hand, when you are exerting most of your capacity on trying not to kill
yourself. Depression is real. Just because you’ve never had it doesn’t make it
imaginary. Compassion is also real. And a depressed person may cling
desperately to it until they are out of the woods and they may remember your
compassion for the rest of their lives as a force greater than their
depression. Have a heart. Judge not lest ye be judged." [x]
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