Recently, I got my formal mental health diagnosis. I’m not surprised as I’ve already been suspecting some kind of depression for more than a year and I honestly just wanted to get diagnosed so I can stop questioning if I have every other mental health disorder.
I thought I would feel a sense of relief now that there are clear options laid out in front of me of the plausible next steps but I just feel so tired and nothing has changed. It’s been a whooping whole year and I feel the exact same as I had felt in the beginning. I thought I was healing and that even though my symptoms were cyclical that I had become stronger and more capable of handling them. But no, of course, there has to be some relapse to remind me that NOTHING HAS CHANGED AND I’m still WEAK, SICK and EXISTING.
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I probably live in the top 99 percentile of fortunate lives in the USA, not even comparing to the whole world. Not saying that I was born a billionaire or something but possibility of living a happy life, I’ve got all the qualifications. My parents love each other and my family is SO supportive of me that I feel guilty that I’m depressed. I have great and God loving friends that always reach out to me even though I’m that friend that doesn’t really initiate hangouts. I study something that can make me six figures while in college and financially and physical health wise, I have nothing to worry about.
So someone tell me why I have depression. Now I know, this might be gaslighting myself because there doesn’t need to be a reason I think is valid. But it just all doesn’t make sense and I just feel even more helpless because I can’t trace it back to anything to tackle that reason.
One of the main things alongside these mental health issues is that I’ve been more and more overwhelmed by how broken I am and how my mental health issues were probably caused by and also get worse because of my own broken life. Even though like I mentioned, I live a highly possible happy life, I’m not happy and I see many character flaws and mental instability in myself. I see how broken and shattered I am and I think that since there’s no specific reason, that myself as a broken whole is the reason for my own misery and depression.
Through this period of lowness, I’ve also gotten to connect with people in a very unique way. I have more empathy even though I don’t feel empathy. I’ve gotten to hear so many broken stories and witness this vulnerability and trust in community. We are all broken with the broken love we have received and try to give; we are all broken with our own thoughts being our slow killer; we are all broken with our community that has both healed and hurt us.
I HATE it and I hate how everyone is sick and broken some way because their lives also suck and no one was spared. Everyone is so broken and so helpless and I know we have God who mends and heals us but this uncovering of our own brokenness just never ends. Many things that we may have considered insignificant or have tried to hide from our memory have shaped us in so many small and big ways.
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In the Ghibli movie Ponyo, there’s a scene where the villain captures the elderly ladies who all are physically ill with some sorts of physical pains like leg pains into this bubble where there’s no pain. And most of the elderly ladies rejoice at being able to experience no pain even though they already recognize that this is the villains’ plan. And when I was younger, I never understood why they gave in so easily, but now I understand this desire to feel complete and I know that that’s what heaven will be like but until then, I will slowly continuously suffer from this broken shapes sickness.
