Many disabilities are not apparent at birth (like autism.) Symptoms present themselves later (like they do with autism), or people just might not be afflicted with them until later in life (not like with autism, or maybe with autism, who really knows?)
Specifically, I am thinking of depression, which is debilitating and terrible and leads to awful things. I spent much of this morning thinking that a friend of mine had killed himself on Halloween. As it turns out, it wasn’t my friend after all, but someone with a similar name and with a similar life trajectory. I am very grateful that I can still talk to my friend, because now I can tell him how concerned I am for him because when I heard the thankfully false news I wasn’t at all surprised. Depression is a selfish and awful disease, and it is so difficult to take the steps to overcome it because its primary side effect is apathy, so you don’t even care about your own downward spiral.
I have battled depression my entire life. I finally overcame it through coping skills that I learned in therapy. As a result, though, for the rest of my life I will have to spend a lot of time in a clinical state of mind, sorting through my emotions and listening to my internal voice and identifying my emotional triggers.
See, here’s the thing about depression: it’s as diverse as the people it affects. There’s no cookie-cutter cure for depression. Even worse, there’s nothing you can really administer to make it go away. There’s no magic pill (although there are certainly a lot of antidepressants out there.) All of the healing has to happen from within, using methods that may only work for you. Of course it always helps to have an excellent support system, but even that can’t erase the monumental task of healing your self-esteem, or your loneliness, or your sorrow.
Universally, the one thing you can’t do when you are depressed is to burrow up and isolate yourself. Positive energy is always moving, when you become depressed and apathetic and stagnant that positive energy passes you by and goes to someone else. So, you have to get moving. Get out there. Take a walk. Take a drive. Call a friend. And, of course, the absolute instant that you feel that the world might be a better place without you in it, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800- 273-8255. They have the resources that can shine a beam of hope into your darkness, so that you can eventually hold your own little hope flashlight.
