A Personal Testimony about the Unbearable Agony of Depression

Indeed the suffering of depression can drive one to suicide. Any condition that feels so oppressive and unbearable, saps you of your vital energy, stifles your capacity for even the simplest pleasure, and that creates a seemingly incurable sense of hopelessness can certainly push one to the edge of the abyss, if not over it. The natural response to any kind of pain, whether its a toothache or physical soreness, is to seek an immediate remedy or form of relief. The struggle with depression is often an enduring one, a recurring one, and one that may very well seem impossible to overcome. Depression is far from any kind of minor inconvenience or a simple handicap that a person can learn to accept and adapt to. It is far worse than that. I call it a disease of the spirit, for its effects are not strictly psychological, nor strictly emotional— it is a pervasive and paralyzing malady that plagues a person in every which way, undermining ones ability to function properly, stripping away the layers of ones inner strength, crippling all the defenses that would normally prevent someone from the self-destructive tendencies which commonly develop as a response to the gnawing pangs and all the internal hell that come with depression.

One must fight arduously to save themselves from the total defeat that depression leads to, stamping down on you and wringing out your lifeblood all along the way until life is nothing but unadulterated pain. All the things that are easy to take for granted in a healthy state of mind become nullified by the harrowing attrition borne out of a prolonged bout of depression. Its debilitating. Its a bleak emptiness that clouds your window to reality in dull monotone gray. Everything loses its taste and luster. You cant enjoy anything like before. No energy. No motivation. No stimulus. All your thoughts and feelings, every breath you take, theyre all steeped in the toxic foulness of the depression permeating every ounce of your existence. Depression leeches the life out of you like an insatiable blood-sucking vampire, sucking the soul out of you till its all gone. Life collapses into a dark prison-like void. It almost always seems like theres no escape. Youre shut out from the light, walled off from the rest of the world in your despondent den of soundless torment.

The ease with which one can get out of bed in the morning, the regularity with which one can go from beginning to end of each day, living mundane life, everything from ones hygiene to ones diet to ones ability to manage their responsibilities and satisfy obligations, taking care of what needs to be done to get by on a daily basis— all of this gets obliterated by depression. The only thing that is perhaps made easier by depression is the impulse to self-medicate, to sleep, to seek some form of escape, to numb oneself, and even suicidal ideation, which of course in the worst case scenarios may eventually reach the final point of its realization.

Depression kills. That is the grim truth of the matter. Depression kills like cancer kills, like any sort of disease that consumes a persons entire being without any definite solution. Without any definite solution apart from death itself. I have been pushed to the furthest extreme, starved of all my reason to live, suffering so intensely in a relentless, rock-bottom state of total turmoil. I was dangling by a thread. I was ready to cut it. Ready to sever my ties to this life that had come to signify nothing but intolerable suffering. I looked down the barrel. Stared deep into the abyss. Depression had so long drowned me in the blackest holes of spiritual darkness.

Sometimes I still straddle the fence. I hit the same wall and succumb again to the stranglehold of vicious depression. It forces the same question before me again and again. Is this life worth it? Why live when life is nothing but pure pain? Whats the point when theres no hope for me, when Ill never figure out how to be rid of this depression and be happy with my life? Yes, when your own subjective concept of reality gets so damaged and defaced, so twisted and mangled, entangled in a perennial cycle of depression, its rather easy for death to seem like the only answer. Death regarded from this dismal vantage point as the ultimate painkiller.

Yes, sad but true. Its often very tempting to muse on death in the darkest depths of depression. Tempting to entertain the notion. To weigh the decision, to consider the actual choice to kick open that emergency exit door and fling yourself into oblivion. To be or not to be. Who the hell cares anymore what is nobler in spirit if I can no longer suffer the pangs and arrows of this life, the heartache and the thousand stabbing shocks of any day hobbling through the asphyxiating mire of miserable depression. And yet I continue groping down the dark corridor. No clue if there is any light ahead. Life continues dragging me on.

I could go on and on at great length about depression, writing out extensive descriptions of my experiences with it, as I have already in many of my responses on Quora. But I think there have probably already been ample descriptions already offered and I doubt there is a whole lot more in terms of unique general insight I can add to provide you with any significantly deeper understanding. I will however share one key anecdote about one of my own most severe cases of depression. Its one I havent written about before and perhaps giving you this personal account can illustrate a more vivid impression of how truly exceedingly devastating depression can be.

Now first of all let me make it clear that depression has dogged me and antagonized me since childhood. I could easily fill hundreds of pages documenting the countless excruciating ways in which I have been forced to learn the somber and bitter reality of depression inside and out. The first instance in my life I can recall talking about committing suicide was at the age of 11, when I was at a ‘friends birthday party and experienced the sense of alienation that was typical for me. I was seriously depressed through most of middle school and high school. As I entered my 20s, facing the straining demands of adulthood and the increased complexity of life circumstances, the ravages of my depression grew terribly worse.

One of the worst periods in my life lasted from around the age of 23 through 25. I was at a point of feeling completely lost and stuck, realizing how ill-prepared I had been for the post-college life of a career and financial stability. It was a long, incredibly devastating period of severe depression. I honestly believed it would never end. That Id never feel better, never again catch a glimpse of the light. Depression overpowered me and squeezed me so tightly in its clutches day in and day out with uninterrupted monotony, eventually just battering what remained of my stamina and eviscerating every inkling of positivity out of my psyche. I felt increasingly lonely and alienated, stuck in a rut going nowhere but nowhere. My life slowly had become so stagnant and sterile, lacking any and all possibilities for new relationships. I was truly in the gloomiest of pits, floundering, just left feeling more disconnected from the world and more depleted of any hope— feeling like this every day, all day, with no sign of letting up.

One day during this period of depression, in a desperate attempt to find the smallest bit of comfort or relief, I went to the beach with my closest friend at the time. The beach had always been a place I associated with a positive outlook, with childhood magic, with serenity, inspiration, excitement, and a horizon of new possibilities. I went to the beach that day with the hope of just feeling something even slightly good, something that could at least momentarily alleviate the darkness, let a little glimmer of sunshine trickle into my mind and mitigate my sense of absolute hopelessness, if just briefly.

I quickly figured out that this was in vain. Thinking I could somehow escape the manacles of depression, even for one afternoon, proved to be a disheartening act of folly.

Not only that, it backfired. Painfully. Seeing the crowds of happy people all around me, the families, the friends, the couples, all of them flourishing in the company of others, able to savor the afternoon with a sense of levity that seemed so foreign, so far beyond my grasp— this only aggravated my suffering. A fertile atmosphere of joy, of romance, of lifes precious gifts was right in front of me and yet I felt a million miles removed from it. I felt in my own way like Gregor Samsa in Kafkas Metamorphosis. I was a deformed alien creature, a bug, a vermin, an invisible cipher, no longer able to interact with the world around me, a world I felt I didnt belong to anymore, so estranged from it had I become under the dominance of this unchecked depression. Sapped of joy, unable to taste the tiniest hint of that fresh atmosphere outside me, I felt caged inside the claustrophobic hole of my empty world, smothered and knotted up in what I believed was inextricable, eternal suffering. When evening rolled by, I hit my breaking point.

My friend and I were walking along the beach when suddenly I just snapped. A sudden shriek of FUCK IT ALL had welled up violent from inside me, screaming infinite curses at the world in which I merely existed without a moment of joy, saturated with incessant pain. I started kicking trash cans over, unhinged, aching inside with such extreme heartache— I just wanted to rebel against reality. I wanted out of my prison of depression. I wanted everything to stop. I no longer wanted to continue in my steps, I was ready to defy any effort to do anything, to go anywhere. I fell face down in the sand as my friend watched me with astonishment. There I lied in the sand for a while, as though in pitifully glaring defeat, beaten down by the depression. I didnt care about anything. I didnt care how I looked. I didnt care if my heart just finally gave out in that instant. I just wanted all the pain to end.

This physical collapse— that single deliberate act of falling down in the same was a symbolic show of my anguished resignation. Life hurt too much for me to even want to keep walking. It was all pointless. I felt so impaired, so at a loss to summon up the smallest drop of energy, so torn up and ravaged by the seemingly invincible throes of depression, it was like there was just no reason to keep going. No reason to move. I just wanted to give up once and for all. The ongoing struggle was just too much to bear. The depression had taken too heavy a toll on me, it had worn me down to the lowest rung of my life-force. Just a slight degree off from the fatal leap.

What happened that day you see is a plain example of what depression can do to someone at its harshest stages. It weighs you down with such paralyzing potency that eventually the physical exertion required to perform the simplest feat such as walking from one place to a other becomes too painful. The spirit is deadened, vanquished, straitjacketed until it is no longer able to move. Or no longer willing to move. Its like life stops and yet youre still breathing. The world around you is still moving, still dancing, laughing, kissing, smiling, thriving with energy, proceeding without a single regard for you and all your killer pain. Meanwhile life inside you has just stopped. You become dead to the world, feeling invisible and irrelevant, practically exiled from the hustling, bustling parade of life that rushes past you indifferently, as you languish, waste away, watching another day waste away while the rest of the world gets to run and play and bask in the sun. The world inside you stops and you just want all the gears to just stop, there is a screaming outburst unleashed from inside, screaming with the last gasps of your poison life-force for everything to just stop.

Everything hurts so much and you dont want it to go on anymore. You refuse to move and you fall face down, broken. Shattered in absolute despair. The spirit has crumbled, eradicated by the virus of depression. The depression kills you inside and yet you are still there, still alive, and its all too hard, everything is so painfully difficult, its oh so painfully difficult to live, its oh so painfully difficult to die. And so there you are, prostrate in surrender, immobilized by the overwhelming agony, subjugated by the depression, without the will to do anything. Without the will to weather another moment of the torture. You feel so powerless, so comatose, so brutally beaten down by the depression, you no longer feel the will and you no longer can find a reason to take another step forward. So you just fall down. Maybe youll get up again. Probably not today. Perhaps tomorrow. Probably not. Perhaps next month or next year. Perhaps never.