Sometimes I think, depression is very much like plunging into dark water. The water is dark and is mystique in ‘n’ number of ways. Once you have fallen in, directions seem more like a maze. Your lungs will call out for oxygen, bang at your ribs and the pain will have the exuberant energy of a hyper child. The reality clock strikes, unveiling your ‘I am alone’ idea. Haplessly and helplessly, you wish somebody would see. Somebody would give you a hand. Pull you up. On the surface, the water looks plain, untouched and pristine. Who would know, that below all that calmness, somebody is conflicting death or surrender, but is failing at chances?
Some other times I end up imagining a depressed being is haloed by dementors. For those readers, who are not acquainted with the idea of dementors, let me give a brief explanation. Dementors are flying beings, wearing black cloaks, which has the ability to suck out happiness from their prey first and life second. Beyond a dementor kiss, people feel like, chances at being happy anymore, at life are nil. Dementors erode happiness. Dementors are everywhere.
There are still other times, when depression reminds me of a container, full to the brim with plain water. – another drop, will break the surface tension, while a go at displacing what it holds, would mean spilling, at least a small volume. Yet again, depression looks like that point where the red scarf on the rope in a tug of war game, is exactly at the mid-point. The forces on either sides, tug hard to win over. The conflict is unbearable.
The pandemonium inside a depressed person, is often not seen or beyond the comprehension of a normal kin. Depression is not mere sadness. It is much beyond. Some days are set aside for tears that have no reason to cite. Some other days are ruled by a inert passiveness or numbness. Friends are turned down, anything social is shut down with an opaque shutter, but all these are just peripheral manifestations, just the little green weeds that line a dark forest. Internally, he or she can be anywhere. Amidst a civil war, drowning in the Amazon, stuck in an evergreen forest, lost in a vast desert or about to commit suicide. Depression costs one’s identity or true nature and later, one’s life. Yes, depression kills.
The most frequent err, when it comes to this sickness, is the failure at diagnosing the same. People set it aside, tagging the condition under mere sadness or break up phase or simply, bad times. This is very wrong. The stigma surrounding mental illness is what weighs down the chances of a depressed person receiving help. People need do understand, it is not wrong to want help, to deal with certain conditions, beyond our understanding. It is NOT wrong to take medication for depression. It is not just the doing of one’s mind, but the brain and the endocrine system are equally accountable. Anyways how to treat is irrelevant, if the affected, are refusing to reach out.
Depression is curable, but not trivial. Lives are at stake. The thought of a stupid stereotype, killing people is bizarre, but happening. Let us hope that modernization, will hit the boulders blocking the path to help, hard enough, to stir changes.