Forums / Discussion / General

Depression is a mental illness that some of us at KYM, including me, suffer from. If you have any stories of depression, why not share your story here?

If you are feeling extremly depressed and need to talk to somebody, call 1-800-SUICIDE (1-800-784-2433) or 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255).

If you are in danger of hurting yourself/others, call 911.

Remember, Suicide is never the answer. Getting help is the answer

I've dealt with serious depression before. The worst was not when I was bullied at school, or stressed from a shitty factory job, or even the time I had to live in a veranda with a roof leak

No, the most depressing moment was when I was unemployed, alone and living at my parents house. It was worse because I didn't have all those things mentioned above. I had nothing at all. No love, no hate, nothing to do. Life sure feels at it's most meaningless when it is empty. When you get into that state, depression just snowballs

But even then I have never reached the point of even considering suicide.

I used my depression to motivate me, in a way. I would tell myself, that if I was so sad about my situation them my recourse was to resolve it, not wallow in it. And taking action really does help. Even if you just start jogging every day, it seems to help ease depression. I find

I've also dealt with friends who came very close to suicide. At least two of my friends have called me in the past saying morbid suicidal things or considering it. I talked them both out of it by talking to them both about how I've pushed through depression: Looking for answers instead of focusing on problems

It seems to me that once people learn good methods on how to deal depression, they take that over suicide instantly.

In b4 Blubber makes a Riff-Raff parody thread

I started on anti-depressants about 6 years ago in middle school and have been on them since then. I had issues with depression before that because my cousin died of SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) when I was 8 and that really effected me, and then a few months after that we moved in with my Grandma and Grandpa to help take care of my Great-Grandma and spent two years living there until she died. I don't know why I started having issues in middle school but I ended up missing some school (I still aced all my classes because I'm me and I never lose), and it was around that time I started getting really into Transformers.

A few years later in Junior year of high school I got a pilonidal cyst and ended up missing most of the year and repeating it, and going through depression while recovering leading to an increase in my dosage. I've been doing better lately and actually just talked to my psychiatrist (who is now also working with the prison system after years of working with me and my family) about trying to lower and eventually stop taking my anti-depressant. My family has a history of depression and mental illness all the way back to the turn of the century when my Great-Great-Great-Grandfather killed my Great-Great-Great-Grandmother and then himself because "the spirits told him to."

On the issue of suicide, I've had the thought but never gave it any actual credence. One. because it something I can't undo and I know everything works out in the end and it would it be extremely painful, and two. I love myself and the people my death would effect way too much. Seriously that's what people don't consider when they kill themselves is that they are hurting their family and friends.

^THIS. I cannot begin to emphasise how helpful this post is.

Personally, the times I have been most depressed were at the beginning and end of middle school, when I lacked any decent social life.
I think the best way to avoid/end depression is to at least attempt to make friends and establish social connections with people. Probably the happiest times in my life have been when I've had intimate friendships with people IRL.

I have this problem (I think it's a rare symptom of OCD) where I constantly force myself to evaluate whether or not I deserve the life that I'm living. Being a student, I contribute very little to the economy and to society outside of a few hours every weekend when I work as a volunteer for the campus library.

Do I deserve the clothes on my back, my computer, my smartphone? The fact that I get to eat three meals a day? I'm convinced that the answer is no, which… well, it sucks.

Can't wait to graduate and get a job. Then I'll feel useful. Hopefully.

I'm not sure how much I can do to convince you otherwise, but just by volunteering at a library automatically makes you a more valuable member to society than a good chunk of most people before graduation, including myself.

I can't say I've come anywhere close to feeling as bad as some of you guys, but last semester I ended up feeling completely apathetic towards pretty much everything. Sometimes I would end up skipping classes and staying in my room for the whole day feeling uninterested in anything at all. I ended up failing the semester because of that so I'll be repeating in soon but I'm feeling a lot better now.

Obviously this isn't even close to as bad as a lot of people have it (it probably wasn't even really depression) but it gives me some serious perspective on how much it can really suck. All I can say is that people who have full blown depression are serious troopers for putting up with that shit; good on 'em.

As a long time sufferer of Major Depressive Disorder, I've begun to reduce my medication of Fluoxetine to about 20 mg a day, which is a pretty big jump from 30 mg daily, so I'm personally happy about that.

As has been mentioned in this thread prior, making yourself useful helps when it comes to making yourself FEEL useful and less like a waste of space, which would lead to more depressive thoughts otherwise. Just do something, be proactive. Hell, it doesn't even need to be major (finding a new hobby), but anything works, even if it involves staying in your house, so long as it changes what you are currently doing. As someone who has contemplated suicide in the past, I would seriously recommend this.

A sapling doesn't give fruit and birds can't nest in it so it doesn't contribute much its ecosystem, but once it fully grows it will. You're in school right now being a student is your contribution. Once you graduate (hopefully from college eventually) then you can worry about making contributions to society, right now you're still growing.

No, the most depressing moment was when I was unemployed, alone and living at my parents house. It was worse because I didn’t have all those things mentioned above. I had nothing at all. No love, no hate, nothing to do. Life sure feels at it’s most meaningless when it is empty. When you get into that state, depression just snowballs

…Goddammit, you pretty much described my life right now. Worse is that I've had a bunch of my mentors in my field tell me that my resume/curriculum vitae is one of the best they had seen from someone still in my master's program. Then I graduated back in May and it's only now that I've started seeing possible job prospects show up again. I had a few of them mention that they'd be surprised if I didn't have job by the time I graduated and now I feel like I failed them on that account.

Since August, I had been living with my parents. They had noticed my gloominess and bad mood but it always seemed like they didn't actually give a shit and just wanted me to get a full time position somewhere so they could just get rid of me. I know things will get brighter eventually, maybe even real soon, but for now, it feels like the light at the end of the tunnel hasn't gotten any closer yet.

I started having severe panic attacks last week. I was a mess, couldn't function at all, and more depressed than I had ever been in my life. I was given xanax to help, but It only made it worse because they only gave me a few pills, so I was constantly worried and It would make the attacks come more often and made sleep almost impossible. I spoke to a therapist, and after the second meeting I got over my panic attacks for the most part. That having been said, I have barely slept for the past 3 days, I am fine, just exhausted. I have severe insomnia at the moment.

I think I'm kind of depressed, but not in the clinical sort of way where the chemicals in my brain are fucked up. (Well… maybe they are, but just not too extreme.) Instead, it's because I spend a lot of time just thinking- thinking about shit going on in the world, the way people are. And more often than not, due to the way I naturally look at things, that gets me down in the dumps. I see absolutely nothing wrong with that kind of depression. You shouldn't lie to yourself in a vain attempt to keep a smile permanently plastered on your face.
As for suicide, I think I fall in a bit with Doug Stanhope:
"Suicide is another thing that's so frowned upon in this society, but honestly, life isn't for everybody. It really isn't. It's sad when kids kill themselves 'cause they didn't really give it a chance, but life is like a movie: if you've sat through more than half of it and it sucked every second so far, it probably isn't gonna get great right at the very end for you and make it all worthwhile. No one should blame you for walking out early."
If you want to kill yourself only because your brain is literally broken, then yeah, we should do everything we can to fix that. But if you've tried out life for at least a few decades and found that no matter how hard you try you're just fucking miserable and can't contribute anything valuable that you give a shit about, then why in the hell would you stick around?
Of course, this wouldn't come even close to applying to any of you. So don't. Please.

A couple decades? The brain isn't even done developing until you're 25. Depression isn't like a permanent painful disease, you can and will get better from it and have no excuse for suicide, especially when you haven't even begun to experience life yet. By 20 you don't even know who you are. You haven't started your career, met your spouse/started a family, and lot's of people (especially on this site) wouldn't have had sex at that age. You've only dealt with growing up and school which is the hardest and least rewarding part of life.

I'm not sure if I've ever been close to being actually depressed or not.
I think my closest moment was back in Summer 2013. The year had been pretty crap for me so far. A close relative died in the start of the 2013, I felt out of touch with my friends since we all kind of began going separate ways; and I was pretty rough after my relative's passing, making it a bit hard for me to make new friends and be friendly (to be blunt, people took me for a massive jerk)

It eventually escalated to the point that I was convinced nobody actually cared about me; that they only cared because they felt that they had to. Then somebody really mouthed off at me when I did something that inconvenienced them, which is when I attempted self-harming and even considered suicide.

Now I only ever tried self-harming once. And I didn't even do it seriously. All I did was take a small knife that was unreasonably blunt and dragged it across my wrist four or five times. At the very most, I had red marks on my wrist for the rest of the day.
As for suicide, I did waste a perfectly good hour of a perfectly nice day considering drinking some chemicals in the cupboard under the sink, lying in bed to just…die, basically. I didn't bother, though; for the rest of that day I only opened that cupboard so I could do the dishes.

For one, me killing myself would tear my entire family asunder. Second, I have a pet lizard and I need to take care of him (I know that may sound strange or may come off as a joke, but I care about my pets a lot). Third, I have a fair amount of years ahead of me; that's plenty of time for things to get better.

Things picked up close to the end of the year, though. I met some decent folk since then, achieved things that I'm pretty proud of. But the one thing that still bothers me is that I never talked to anybody about it. Not a doctor, not a member of my family; I'm not sure if anybody even noticed how things were for me that summer.
Should I have talked to a doctor and got some anti-depressants? Should I have told my family, considering how they were still torn up over the death of another family member?

Thank you so much for making this thread. Glad there's somewhere I can get this off my chest.
Anywho, my first bouts with depression occured when I was nine. Dad was playing football and I was bullied often for my quirky personality (A result of all of my childhood heroes being video game characters and my dad, likely). After another two years of being the happiest motherfucker ever, my mother suddenly went silent one day. I found out much later it was because my dad was sick of screwing a bunch of different women just to satisfy my mother's bisexual fantasies. When he called her out on it and let her know it was wrong, she threw a tantrum. Needless to say, we ended up moving from what I still consider one of the greatest places on Earth, Weldon Springs, all the way out to Denver.
Shit really picked up from there. People around me started getting girlfriends and boyfriends. I however, was too quirky. Too nerdy and nice. I ended up getting a waifu in Flannery to cope with my loneliness. It all exploded when one night, my mother was yelling at my dad, who was pissed at her for cheating. I realized then that I was a bastard child. My real dad was out in Philadelphia.
So we moved again after I finished 6th Grade out to Arizona. For a while, things looked up. My summer break out there was a dream come true. I even fapped for the first time. But after summer ended and I entered school, just as I was finally getting ready to feel better about myself. Then my mother moved out of my dad's room, deciding to take up the guest room for herself. Before long she and dad were arguing yet again. She then booked herself a flight out to Alabama and came back, revealing she cheated on dad AGAIN and proceeded to call the cops on him in a false claim of physical abuse. I remember, for the first time ever, I was angry at my mother.
Then… then everything got truly shitty. I realized I had clinical depression when my mother dragged my little brother and I out to Palmyra PA, in my aunt's house (Which my dad could have pressed charges for as a KIDNAPPING). I became reckless, stopped eating to the point where I only ate dinner. School in general became hell. I was bullied as always. I lived in my cousin's room, constantly afraid mom or auntie would walk in. Soon enough, I was at the emo table at school, where kids who were considered "weirdos" gathered.
For a brief time, things were looking up.
Then I got tossed out because one of them was a bonafide Tumblr SJW, who hated me because
1) I was from a rich family
2) I was skinny
3) I didn't fit in with her worldview.
She declared me a homophobic bastard and all my 'friends' immediately estranged me.
And thus began the absolute worst times of my life. My aunt tossed me into the basement when I answered a call from my father. After that, my mom walked in and held me up by my collar, verbally attacking me. She took my phone and, adding onto the statement from my 'friend', called me a disrespectful punk who will never amount to shit.
I ended up living in the basement. A cold as shit basement that was dark as hell and had absolutely no sign of other people down there (In retrospect I am so glad FNaF didn't exist back then). So at this point:
> I had 0 friends
> I was the school punching bag
> I grew to be a nihilist
> I lived in the shittiest place possible for a middle class child
> My own mother and aunt loathed me
> My only escape was video games and this site, probably the only place people didn't hate me
This continued for a solid year, straight through near the end of 7th Grade to near the end of 8th Grade.
I got close to killing myself.
I remember it being around January 2013. I was at the absolute worst point of my depression. I began to felt physical pain from being so sad. Not even having a waifu began to slow the pain of my loneliness, if anything, it made everything worse. I grabbed a knife from the kitchen, went into a mirror in the basement, and I held it at my throat. I almost jerked it to the side when something told me "Don't do it."
I narrowly stopped myself. And I never picked up a knife for two months. I decided that I would at least TRY to survive until things got better.
Then my mother decided it was time to move. And when we did, I finally tried to be better. I socialized with more people and realized Palmyra was a messed up fucking town. Every other kid was abused or depressed.
And now we reach the present time, and I'm starting to recover. I stopped being scared of video game characters (Fuck you Giygas and Freddy Fazbear). And I've even found a girlfriend who is exactly like me, who knew just how shitty it was to be that eyes-deep in depression, and she even decided to start cosplaying Flannery (As long as I agreed to cosplay as Beast Boy, her husbando) just to help me back to my feet and make me feel happier.
Needless to say, I'm far from being fully outta that slump. But I'm getting pretty close to finally not having headaches constantly. I'm finally seeing the good in people. I'm becoming confident in myself. And finally, I don't have to live every day, having murderous and suicidal thoughts flying through my head. All thanks to an incredible gf weed video games, and some cool friends.
Depression is a motherfucker. And I hope nobody has to feel the way I feel,and that those who do will get better soon. (I AM SO SORRY FOR THIS WALL OF TEXT.)

This time last year I was so depressed I was going to kill myself and I was put into a hospital

Now I can actually look at myself and like what I see, I'm not seeing my therapist anymore, and I'm getting married in less than half a year

Things will get better
I promise

I already know all of this. That's why I said a few decades and not a couple. Big difference- just take another look at the Stanhope quote.

Here's my sob story: Back when I was in the 8th grade – Sophomore year, I felt like I was a waste of space. I was a straight F student while my sisters had 3.5 – 4.0 GPAs, I always messed something up one way or another due to my incompetence and people would get mad a me, all the guys in my PE class where able to finish a mile in 8:30 while I finished in 10:30, hell I couldn't even play some damn vidya without fucking up a lot. All these things just made me feel worse and worse to the point that I hated my own guts. Every day, I'd go through the motions and critisize how inadequate I was at doing things; form writing to just simply the way I walked. Then my self loathing got even more out of hand. Not only did I hate what I did, but I also hated me as a person. I'd go on these mental rants about how I don't belong in society and how I was wasting a valuable human life. Then I started to get… Bad ideas. I'm going to be blunt because I think we all know what I'm implying: I wanted to end myself because I thought that I didn't earn the privilege to live. Thankfully, since I'm the kind of person that believes that suicide is a one way ticket to hell, I didin't attempt it. However, i still did "other things" to put me in my place. (I was a textbook emo. Who would've thunk it?). But, as I grew older, I started to turn things around: I'm getting better grades, I'm more careful with what I do, I started to lift, and I'm an MLG FaZe clan n0sc0p3 mast3r. And my whole exiatence complex? I decided to live by this motto: "Get good"

I have experienced short bursts of depression before, but never anything long-term. It's usually anywhere between a few hours to a week when it does happen. Most of the time, it's because of silly things (like the fanfic Twilight's Dollhouse) that I just don't like. Playing guitar usually helps me; especially a catchy song like, say, Bowling for Soup's "1985." You guys also help me feel better a lot, and for that, I thank you.

I think I can sum up depression like this…

Imagine a person in your head, who is a complete asshole. Every moment of every day, the cunt judges every thing you do, and never says anything positive. To that fucking prick, every mistake is a colossal failure, and every achievement means nothing. When you're alone, he tells you how worthless you are, that you don't have any friends, no job, starts making you wonder how anyone could ever love you. God forbid you start crying, he'll just call you a pussy, and make it worse. You try to cheer yourself up by reminding yourself of how good a life you really have, how many people love you, he guilt trips you into thinking you don't deserve it. That person's your own brain.

Depression is an abusive relationship with your own head.

This is the first time I've talked about it.. with anyone. To be honest, the only reason I'm posting is because I found this thread a few minutes ago after having another… self-conversation. Some days it gets bad, but the fucker shuts up most days now. It's gotten better since. Got into college, grades are great, and while my social life still ain't that good, it's better than it was last year. If it gets worse, I got things to keep me going: Great parents, Steam friends, video games, waifus, and… you guys. I don't say this much, but you guys… are awesome. All of you. Even the shitposters. ESPECIALLY the shitposters.

IDC if no-one reads this, just needed to say it. Thanks for letting a 18-year old nobody vent…

I experience two different kinds of depression. At least in my own terms.

There is the feeling of being content at the bottom of the well. that feeling that you are at the bottom and can't go any lower. in an odd way I find it rather comforting. this is the most usual depression I have, thinking about happy things makes me angry, like someone trying to help me out of the well, or climbing out, and some part of me lashes back, refusing to move, perfectly happy to just sit at the bottom and feel empty. enjoy reading and watching sad things and feeling justified in my misery. But never asking or looking for help to avoid bring people down into the pit with me.

Then there is the feeling of wanting to climb out and escape. where any sad news or things feel even more devastating. like climbing up and seeing the sunlight, and slipping. this is a bit more rare for me at least. its like looking for anything to help me climb up and escape. usually this form of depression is when I am at my darkest, when I think about hurting myself, and escaping that hole I am stuck in with death. part of me desperate to escape and get as far away from myself and others to avoid slipping back in.

just flow back and forth between the two some days, sometimes stuck in one for a few days or longer. I must admit the second form was rather common for me in high school, but rarely shows up anymore now that I am in college.

I've had depression for twelve years now (starting when I was about 15) , with a history of self-injury and two suicide attempts. I've gone through several therapists and tried more medications than I can remember, to little avail. The bottom problem is I have aspergers which have pretty much fucked up any attempts on my behalf to create a normal functioning life.

I've been going through some pretty serious stuff lately, I don't really wanna have to explain it all out here (msg me if ya must know). I think it must be wearing my brain down, cause i've just lost all interest in life. I don't wanna go out with friends anymore, I just wanna do my own thing. Like, just the other day I rode my bike out to a forest just to feel like I was away from everything else. I really did too, and I feel happy being alone.

I'm taking medication for my depression and after a few changes in dosage/types, it's getting better which is really good

Wanting to be alone isn't unhealthy; it's only bad when you do it to hide your problems and feelings. If that's the way you relax, go for it, but if you need help, don't try to handle it on your own if it's too much for you.

And it's fucking great when you're listening to Dark Side of the Moon while you're alone, feeling the cool breeze against your face. Only very rarely am I more content than in that moment.

Facebook has stepped up it's suicide prevention methods by creating new tools to help users get in contact with local IRL friends to help.