The Evolution of a Potential Depression- A Long Ramble

(note- more short and squat version of a thing I said in the Helping each other forum)

It started whilst I was eating dinner one day- 

The last week or two had been filled with high anxieties about my semester and overdue work, my co-op job, home problems (literally, with my home having constant repairs done to it), and some intensive troubles with relationships, both romantic and platonic.

But that day, that night, was different. Calm.

I listened to a Beatles album and ate some ramen. Shortly thereafter, I just stopped feeling. Anything.

Good or bad.

I presumed it was just a weird thing I could sleep off, and come back from the next morning.

It was not. It was far from that simple. It disappeared briefly, but came back much stronger later that morning.

By the end of the day, I have checked out from every single thing I can remember. I have completely dissociated from everything. Thoughts, memories, emotions. I don't feel anything. I am no longer mentally connected to anything. My brain, normally a loud or crowded space, goes silent. It sounds empty and hollow. My inner monologue is silenced unless provoked. This went in deep. Years worth of stuff, decades, 15 years, practically my entire life that I can consciously remember, is effectively made null and void in my brain. I cannot recognize these moments I've lived as mine in my own brain.

Amidst it all, I suffer something resembling a panic attack at work. I am filled with anxiety, I do not feel comfortable at all, and I begin to feel physical after effects of this whilst I finish up each aisle, but I have to keep working. I cannot just call it off because I feel rough. I'd look fucking crazy obviously, plus I'm like 17, I cannot be bitching and moaning mental health when I'm the unpaid help. I finish, rush out and head home to try and figure out what the fuck is going on.

The next few weeks are an unmitigated nightmare. My days become increasingly mechanical.

I do not connect well with my environment anymore. Hobbies and interests become distant memories that I no longer care about strongly, and not in an unmotivated sense. I feel as if I'm trying to live my life as normal, as if I still want to feel things and do stuff and take in experiences as you do, but I just can't. The best way to describe if is as if my impulses and nerves and reactors and shit are literally suppressed or sedated, as if they are literally being physically forced to not react, and leaving me reluctantly, unwillingly, and hopelessly, trapped as a rather soulless type behind the eyes.

In tandem with this, I sort of just stop enjoying life. 

Throughout the first week of this, events and moments from my life flash in my mind like little memory bites, as if they're being replayed to taunt me or something, and this continues on and off.

At one point, I strain myself rather hard trying to remember and connect to these memory bites, and with them, the few emotions that I can still faintly feel.

However, this strain is taken as reason to panic from my nerves, and I enter another round of anxiety, which ends with me having a cloudier, fuzzier memory and even less emotions.

From here on out, things get worse.

Nothing triggers any emotions, except funny videos, which trigger brief bursts of laughter, and the occasional defeated sadness, which brings up brief bursts of tears, both of which quickly dry up and end.

I stop connecting with the people around me.

Assignments are getting put to the wayside.

I stop sleeping right.

I sleep later. I sleep way too long.

I stay in my bed for hours at a time, and in my bedroom for longer.

I refuse more and more to interact with the outside world.

I eventually stop caring about what I do and how I live, so hygiene, eating, the like that makes life possible, just sort of either becomes mechanic or meaningless or both.

I can no longer hang onto thoughts as good, and it becomes a progressively harder struggle to hold onto any memories proper, almost as if my memory cannot store anything due to some random unspoken damaged layer.

Eventually, life as a whole really stops mattering to me.

I spent an entire week with a sort of mental fatigue that seemed to physically manifest into constant exhaustion.

And the funny thing is, before all of this happened, even though I was anxious and full of stress, I was also the happiest I had been in quite a few years, thanks mainly to a creative project or two that gave my life outside of work and school deeper meaning, and an intensive mental effort to sort of settle all unfinished business in my brain to give me better peace of mind.

Still, things happened even then. Reminders of past issues (lack of closure with people, academic disappointments, creative unfulfillment, social isolation, romantic failure, attachment issues), had dogged me for quite a few years by then. 

This time, said reminders effectively sent me into shock, shock I suspect contributed to further mental problems.

So, at the moment, things are rough.

By this point, I've begun to become (by a combination of outside force and a weak but still standing inside will) a more high functioning type of depressive, out of no better reason than I still gotta function, society will keep on running, and the fact that my intensive sad break may have potentially cost me my summer school placement.

No clue where to go from here.

Therapy, psychologist's office, doctor's examination, who knows-

I want to get this treated, but knowing circumstances, it might take a bit

When I reached that low point, I just felt so tired of suffering such great pain alone

Currently, I'm at a much more agreeable position where I look more alive and feel a bit less inclined to sink away, so at this point, I'm just tired of not knowing what I might have

Point is, life's been rough,

I have no clue what to do about it,

And I'm scared for the future.

But I know if I talk about it somewhere, it just might help.

Maybe.