depression

well I still seem to be in an up and down section of the upswing of my depression (at least I'm still hoping it's an upswing and not just changes within the down part)  but like I mentioned last week here's something of a post detailing my struggles with depression.

depression is something that is unfortunately very common among the transsexual crowd. but when you have a body that feels alien, and a society that tries to say you don't have a right to exist it's amazing to find any transsexual or intersex individual who don't' suffer from it.  I also belive there are a lot of missconceptions about depression, and that most people experince it in very diffrent ways.

I remember the first time I started hearing about depression as a sort of medical aliment, I was in early middle school. and at the time there was a news program made for school students, they had some sort of special on depression and trying to raise awareness of it, and has I heard some of the testimonies about it it really did resonate with me. but for a number of reasons I didn't take it that seriously and weeks later I gave it no mind. the two biggest reasons for this were fear of being something of a hypocondriac and thus misdiagnosing myself, and the fact that the special presented it as something that is always present in those people, 24/7 265 days a year. were as mine was persistent but did (and does) go away for long periods of time as well.  it wasn't till many years later, after my depression had played a role in me dropping out of college the first time, did I really start learning that for some people it does come and go in various patterns.

as I sort of stated earlier, my depression or not depression periods (I have no idea what to call them) tend to come and last for long periods of time.  and a large part of the danger for me is that sometimes when those down periods go on long enough that I begin to effectively forget it's not just the way things are (such as happened when I was at my last job getting verbally abused for a living) during these periods I begin to really think about suicide, and I've really thought about it more than anybody should (ideally no one should have to think about it at all except in context of suicide prevention but I hope you get my point). I can often spend hours contemplating how to keep people from finding my body, how long it would take to get a gun in my gun loving state, what I could use to keep me from vomiting when I'm using poisons, you get the idea.  but for my sake it's importatnt to try and remember what I'm like in my depressive states and recognize when I am, there may not be a lot I can do to counter the psychological effects it has on me, but knowing when I am in those down area's helps me take enough control to keep away from drastic actions and to make sure I keep taking care of myself (so far anyway)

but most importantly I think there are some very dangerous misconceptions about depression that are held in public consciousness. one I still struggle with myself is the idea that the medication is bad or that it's like giving up on life, or the more extreme people like my own father who equate depression medication to happy pills that keep you in some sort of euphoria.  after dropping out of college I was on depression medication for a while, and in general I felt better than I usually do during my high points, life was still far from happy bliss, I still struggled with my gender issues but my head felt a lot clearer, of course my own hesitance to take medication that proved helpful to me (as opposed to the mountains of caffeine I like to self medicate with when I can afford it) led me to stop, and now I doubt I could afford the doctor visit to get the prescription even if I finally manage to get past that stigma. 

but most importantly (and I'll admit I'm not sure how best to say this) is the misconceptions that society has about how depression works, like lady Alexia i've heard people tell me that my life is too comfortable to surfer from depression, which is a very bad thing to say regardless of how comfortable somebodies life is, the fact that depression increases the likely hood of suicide should tell you it's not a logic based alignment. any statement like this will only make things worse, it's not addressing the depression itself, it's not doing anything to alleviate the thoughts or emotions that come with it, and most of all it's adding a layer of guilt on top of the depression so it's actually making things significantly worse.  in a similar vein it's never a good idea to say things like people who commit suicide are taking the cowards way out or are being selfish.  these sorts of statements are likely to make people more likely to commit suicide as they attack the self worth of people who are already starting to see it as a last option, and even if you don't think these people are around we hear it, and you can never be sure, most people in my life wouldn't know that about me but it still stings when I hear it.  and for the record, many people who do commit suicide believe there doing a favor to those around them in the long run (myself included)