Depression and Time

Days without food or movement flow into one another. The only time that can be quantified is the moments during which my mind is less muted than usual—when emotions are something tangible.

In the short-term, the smaller picture of things, depression renders everything to an endless monotony of nothing. In the long-term, it is missed marks in exams and it did not occur to you that you would be sitting and getting out of bed after a month and wondering if your friends still count you as such.

We live in an age of communication and even a day without access to technology feels like missing out on another link that holds and strengthens the friendship between everyone else. It is also a world where feminism and sensitivity and understanding are expected—where to not be such is the only definition of"'uncool" to still exist in a vastly embracing individualistic time.

The general consensus is that if your friends do not treat you as they should, or as you wish them to, you should cut ties and start again somewhere else. The fiercely self-preservatory ideology that permeates the 21st-century youth holds an implication of optimism that seems to be against the general stereotype of us as being a generation of morbid pessimists. There is an absolute idea that you will be able to find a group of people that together will fulfill every criterion you would wish them to, and, more importantly, would do so without being anything other than exactly as they are.

I don't know if this is a truth we have stumbled upon by being the first generation so easily connected to so many people or an unfortunately positive fantasy that will lead to yet more loneliness and "grass-is-greener."

Recently, though, I have come to the discovery that some friendships work better (or, only) under certain circumstances. The immobile tendencies of my mental illness, for example, benefit vastly from having friends as flatmates. The physical proximity and the lack of desire to want to meet up with my schoolmates spread far across West London.

A day is much longer at university, where each is bookended by catered meals among 50-300 and where so much can happen in 10 hours that "catching up" can be an essential to every day.

A day is much shorter with depression when two could pass within an hour of blank, gaze-less eyes on your far wall. Of course, five minutes could also be an eternity, if spent paused in terror on the way to the kitchen at the sound of familiar voices with a cold weight at your chest.

The link between depression and time, though, is most keenly felt when spending such attempting to describe how it is, attempting to explain the colors of a sunset to someone whose colour-blind gaze has never left their house.

Words mean different things and how could they not? Imagery seems to be the only tool we have to explain these things. It is a common-enough device—from using images of the universe to describe the character of a God in his role as a creator. If you cannot share an experience then sharing a recount of it is surely a close second.

It takes a long time to construct a phrase to communicate how mental illness affects your life. Adjusting each word until the connotations create exactly the air you want them to and taking care to remove yourself from clichés in the fear of them undermining your explanation in the eyes of the person you're talking too.

The best allegory I have come up with to explain how this journey is as follows:

I've been under water a long time. And it's easier to see now—the pressure has decreased—I'm closer to the surface. But I still can't breathe.