“People think depression is sadness, crying or dressing in black. But people are wrong. Depression is the constant feeling of being numb.”
The world is simply black and white- says the pessimist. The optimist says that the world is full of colours. A realist says that the world has colours, but what we choose to see, makes up the colours of our life. The sadist says that the tapestry of the world has nothing but unbridled emotions of torture and pain
Then, how will he look at the world, where he feels nothing, sees nothing? The world of shadows, where his voice will echo on, endlessly, without any comforting touch.
The newspaper tells us many tales, tales of war, poverty, savagery and all unspeakable horrors that we, do, collectively. But does it ever speak upon, the problems what the individuals experience? We have this nice little tendency of putting the group before the individual. History will surely agree, as we have managed to build and destroy many things which can never be achieved by a single person.
But do we ever look upon the fact that depression is perhaps the single most deadly disease that we have ever encountered??
Broadly speaking, we are divided into three categories, extrovert, introvert, and the ‘in between’ line, neither an extrovert nor an introvert. But doesn’t mean all are exempt from depression
What is depression?
Depression is the absence of emotions, the void which consumes any feeling, and leaves the person dead emotionally, like an invisible dementor to us muggles. Depression is not feeling sad or angry or wearing blacks. Depression is when you have your soul ripped out from you, the pain transcending into painlessness, the vitality becoming languidity.
The people who feel lonely, desperately try to beat the heat, by endlessly looking into others, for satisfying their needs of companionship. It is an open secret perhaps, that about 80pc of people on social media, pass their time in looking at others, to escape their own grim drudgery. The pictures of smiling homo sapiens in the social media, might cause a smile onto us, but at the same time, end up creating feelings of doubt and despair, to those who have spent their times, within themselves, those who didn’t agree to the binary of the extrovert and the introvert.
But at least, on the “bright side” they feel. Feelings of loneliness, despair, give them pain, and walking through the lake of fire, daily gives us the perseverance to feel. As Dumbledore says, the ability to feel makes us a man
But Depression is not a monster. It is form of an extreme painlessness, which causes us, to shut out oneself. When we see people, usually not responding to the gestures made by us, we tend to judge them. But don’t we ever look inside, that the cold exterior hides a lot of doubt, pain, insecurities? The cloak of self defence that people wear, hides a lot of stuff. The abject numbness forces them to repel others who try to close by.
Depression need not, be due to a single, sudden , event. It can be due to years of indifference, either by his own, or by people around. We can never imagine the suffering they undergo within themselves, tackling everything on the way, but still fighting a beast within.
Try to talk, try to make people feel and empathize. We might have leaped into the virtual age, but we need supporting hands. Hands that can hold us, that can giving a helping hand. It might be a mission impossible to get people open up. But if they do, they will be intensely grateful, no matter what