How do you fight against something you can’t see? Against a disease that is not recognized as such by the public?
I’ve been suffering from depression and psychosomatic disorders since I was 20. I’ve been taking psychotropic drugs since I was 21. I have two clinic stays behind me and I am in psycho-therapeutic treatment until today.
Depression is so much more than sadness and groundless crying. I suffer very much from the physical symptoms (dizziness, nausea and vomiting) in my very bad phase I have vomited for 5 weeks all day.
I lay crying on the floor in front of the toilet, I had no power to drink anything alone. I asked my mother to do something so that it finally stops! I would have really done everything to stop it, because that was just survival and no longer life.
And so, I landed in the hospital. After a week of being in the hospital, I was forced into a psychosomatic clinic. And if I have learned anything about this disease, it’s that depression is deadly! But depression is also curable and definitely treatable!
During my clinic stay I was already far over the initial phase of depression. That means the constant sadness, the continuous crying, the never ending fatigue and the hopelessness were gone…
And I noticed what makes depression so deadly. It is the state of utter emptiness. There was nothing in me, I was already dead inside.
I couldn’t cry anymore, I couldn’t feel anything. And that’s the condition that was unbearable to me. Looking back, I’m glad I was at the clinic at that time. Because there I got help from the caregivers.
I asked them to give me something to turn off my mind. I was going down with pills. I slept a lot. If I had been at home at this stage, I wouldn’t be alive today.
That is what I have experienced, and in all this time and all these years, I have come across so much misunderstanding and so much stupidity. I was, at times, really ashamed to suffer from depression and psychosomatic disorders.
Countless times I have heard sentences, like “Don’t pretend. Life is so beautiful. Pull yourself together. You’re just a wimp. Other people have it worse. I would never take psychotropic drugs. You don’t look depressed. You laugh so often. You can’t be that bad.”
But now I know it’s a disease. You can’t see them, but they still exist. Today, I am no longer ashamed! And anyone who suffers from depression should too! Depression has become a part of my life. I fight every day so that it does not gain the upper hand. It is not always easy to suppress negative thoughts.
And I’m sure that in the future, I’ll always come to a point where it’s the, “Hello Darkness, my old friend, I have to deal with you again”. But I’m not afraid of it because I know I’m stronger than this darkness.
