Grief, Sadness & Depression

When many people talk to me about depression, they actually talk about something else. They talk to me about hurt, pain, despair, the healing power of time passing. In short they talk to me about grief. They talk to me about sadness. I do my utmost to stay civil on the inside but inside my blood boils.

Even though I fully appreciate that it is impossible to know clinical depression unless you have experienced it for yourself, I feel the need to vent my frustration. I admit it unashamedly.

Here are my gripes:

• To my knowledge, there is no pill to cure grief. If you lose someone, or even something, you love, you end up heart-broken. No medication for that I'm afraid. No amount of electricity being passed through your brain or chemical compounds being pumped through your bloodstream can mend a broken heart. Only the slow passing of time and perhaps also the loving suppport of others can gradually heal the wound. Note that I say 'heal' the wound - not eradicate it. Grief leaves its scars, for life. As all scars, they sometimes feel alive again, years after you have suffered your heart-breaking loss.
• Sadness is part of our life. Nobody expects to feel on top of the world all the time, even with a positive attitude. There is no medication against sadness either. So-called 'happy' pills, legal or illegal, saddle us with dire consequences. They don't really work, certainly not long term. One of the saddest (pun intended) aspects of our modern life is that we have generally lost the art of accommodating sadness. 'Don't cry' is the first thing we say to someone who is upset. I say "do cry, we'll have a chat when you have had a chance to express your sadness".
• Clinical depression is called clinical depression because it can be treated. Did you know that you cannot be treated for clinical depression during the three months that follow being bereaved? That's because grief and depression are not the same thing, even if grief can act as a trigger to clinical depression. It is this cause/effect relationship that muddies the waters in people's minds.
• The first and most overwhelming symptom of clinical depression is LACK OF ENERGY - not sadness, not feeling blue, not whatever else you can think of that you normally associate with depression. I'll say it again: LACK OF ENERGY. Clinical depression feels like someone has pulled the plug of your energy reservoir and it emptied itself when you were not looking. You wake up one morning and .....   ....   there's NOTHING there. You can't even get out of bed. Total crash. Nothing. Empty. Finito. Kaput. That's clinical depression.  Naturally, this total internal collapse is very depressing!  People do get upset at being so suddenly incapacitated. Of course they do.
• The second overwhelming aspect of depression is that you start crying FOR NO REASON. You're not grieving for anybody, you're not sad about anything, but you cannot stop crying. This is also very depressing! AND you feel like an idiot so it is humiliating as well. Grown-ups are not supposed to cry without knowing why.
• The third aspect of clinical depression feels like the invisible cord that previously linked your will to your brain, your determination to your body, has been cut. You can't  pull yourself together because there is no self left AND the pull-cord has been cut anyway. You're no longer in charge of you and that's a dreadful feeling.

So please don't talk to me about grief or sadness. I know those two. In fact, don't talk to me at all and instead do what my wonderful friends do: listen, for a little while. I do my best not to whinge, not to wine (I am sure I do anyway) but I have also found out that it does me the world of good to have the occasional rant about a condition that has a mind of its own, is totally unpredictable, totally uncontrollable, barely manageable, and feels on the surface a complete waste of time, a total waste of life.

I also do my best to remember that surface isn't the same as truth though....