Fuck Me And Everybody Else

I feel lonely. I feel like everyone around me is emotionally detaching themselves from me because I am graduating and moving back to my hometown. It's like I'm dying and they want to forget about me because they don't want to get hurt. Except it's even worse than if I were dying, because if I were dying people would feel sympathy and keep me company despite the pain that it would bring them. But since I'm only moving away, they have conveniently disposed of me. But what about me? I need intimacy. I need friends.

And all this happens at the perfect time, when, after two years of burning in literal hell that is depression, I finally feel happy enough, strong enough, and confident enough to ask a girl out. So I ask her out and she rejects me. This hurts. I wish she didn't reject me and instead wanted to hang out with me. I wish that when I told people I had depression the conversation didn't lose all of its momentum and people didn't become quiet, avoid eye contact, and wanted to get away all of a sudden. I already did my time, locked inside my own mind, but even now that I am free I am forced to pay the price of social ostracizing.

--
People say that even in your darkest moments, if you reach out, you will find help. Well, I'm here, in my darkest moment, standing in front of you, my friend, asking you to help me. And you say that you cannot help me. So what am I supposed to do?! My friends have failed me. Help is denied to me when I directly ask for it. There is nowhere else for me to go. This is bottomless hopelessness. The world has failed me. Humanity has failed me and all that's left for me to do is break. I feel such intense pain totally unknown to normal experience. You all have condemned me to this by ignoring me. And all you who have rejected me and thereby hurt me, who did not help me through the pain you caused, did not do your part in damage control, even if it was collateral. All of you are just as responsible as those who refused to help me, and even worse, because you perpetrated the pain that led me to necessitate others' help. Your inaction is your crime. I hope you have the least bit of humanity in you to feel remorse for what you did and failed to do. After all, there is no taking back all the pain I went through, pain I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. If you only saw the extent of my pain, you wouldn't think twice before doing everything in your power to help me. Don't you see the torture that you put me through? Answer me! Don't you?!

Hate, Depression, Isolation

The lyrics of my favorite genre, nu metal, are mostly about hate, depression, and isolation. Here I will try to describe what each of these words mean to me.

Hate

I was so far removed from the world. Living inside the prison of my own mind. With my mind turned painfully inwards.

Been hating all this time 

Before I crawled inside
Been hating all the basics of
Everything that I could find

I hated the world, my existence, my disease, my misery, the void—the utter meaninglessness—within, the way everything is so predictable, my friends and family for not understanding and not being able to help, the society for allowing me to suffer so, the human species for our selfish and cruel nature, and everyone and everything that brought me pain.

Oh god, it’s just everything,
It’s everything.

Depression

Why? Wrong question. A hurtful question, even. Why does somebody have cancer, diabetes, a brain tumor? You wouldn’t ask “why do you have that disease” of a victim of these terrible afflictions, would you? No, you would Depression is no different. That’s the first question I’m usually asked. There is a tendency to assume that there is something to be depressed about. This is understandable in the light of the current prevalence of ignorance and misunderstanding about clinical depression. 

“Today, our Nation’s physical health—as a whole—has never been better. Moreover, illnesses of the body once shrouded in fear—such as cancer, epilepsy, and HIV/AIDS to name just a few—increasingly are seen as treatable, survivable, even curable ailments. Yet, despite unprecedented knowledge gained in just the past three decades about the brain and human behavior, mental health is often an afterthought and illnesses of the mind remain shrouded in fear and misunderstanding.”
The first U.S. Surgeon General’s Report on Mental Health (1999)

Recently the instances of mental illness outnumbered those related to cancer, lung, and heart disease combined. Depression, and mental illness in general, is as at least as much serious as cancer, lung disease, and heart disease. This misunderstanding about mental illness stems largely from the stigma and stereotypes of mental illness patients.

The word “depression” is an inadequate name for a description of severe depression, which has little in common with the “normal” experience.

“For over seventy years, the word [depression] has slithered innocuously through the language like a slug, leaving little trace of its intrinsic malevolence and preventing, by its very insipidity, a general awareness of the horrible intensity of the disease when out of control.”

William Styrone, Darkness Visible

The melancholy. The despair beyond despair. The provisional existence. The cancer of the mind. The invisible darkness. The infinite sadness. These are all but names for the disease whose depth and breadth can only be comprehended through its direct experience. This is a blessing for those who do not have the disease, and a curse for those who do, because nobody can understand the suffering unless they have the disease. William Styron talks about this, too, how the disease–and it really does need to be recognized as a disease–is so incomprehensible, and its nature is out of reach, unattainable to people who don’t have it. The most they could feel, I think, is empathy–perhaps pain at seeing a loved one suffer so much from some unseen darkness.

“It is singularly difficult, for even the most sensitive observer, to picture the inner state, the 'situation' of such patients, for this is almost unimaginably remote from anything he himself has ever known."
Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

The etiology—or the cause—of clinical depression is only a speculation in the medical field. The best current model is the biopsychosocial model. Sometimes there are no apparent causes. I was not unhappy because I was grieving the loss of a loved one, or because college was academic stressful for me, or because I did not have enough support from friends and family, or because I had a traumatic childhood, or because my parents are divorcing, or because I could not adjust to a society that values extroversion and individualism. I was just depressed because there's something about Daniel that is bound to be depressed; which leads me to my next theme.

William Styron says his depression was like the perfect storm in his brain, a “brainstorm”, punctuated by a thunder of self-critical, fearful, despairing thoughts—one clap following another in an endless night. Oppressed by these thoughts, people often become hopeless (extreme hopelessness leads to thinking that suicide is the only option to reach a peace of mindlessness).

Korn - Starting Over

Got to face your fear

Lying on the floor

Screaming into nothing, what the hell am I here for?

So come on and play

Stab me in my heart

So long this time was wasted ripping me apart

We are the hurt inside your head

Lost in the void of what is dead

Constantly twisting things I said

Happiness is boring, need pain instead

It's starting over, starting over

Can't stand it over, God is gonna take me out

My time is over, this time is over

Why is this over? God is gonna take me out

Crawling on the floor

All around this space

Talking to myself

What is this thing I've got to face?

Walking through a door

Has it been a waste?

Going on and on thinking I could find my place

My Year Off From Cal

My Year Off From Cal

In retrospect, taking a year off was the right decision for me, and it allowed me to focus on getting treatment for my depression, take a break from school, experience the "real world", and recover.

Many don't know this, but it is actually really easy to withdraw from- and be readmitted to Cal once you've been accepted. If it's a medical withdrawal there is an extra step, but it's still pretty easy as long as you show you are able to handle school. I think more students would benefit from taking a year off--and more would if only they knew about this option and how beneficial it is. Even thought taking a "year off" is the exception in the U.S., it's becoming more common. Many Ivy leagues, including Harvard, encourage their students to take a year off.

Wrapping my mind around the idea of taking even a semester off was very difficult for me since I was in denial that my depression was causing me to do poorly at school, and I felt that I would somehow "fail" myself if I took a year off. I could not accept that I couldn't anymore do the things I used to do so well, like study and go to class. By the end of the semester, because I was doing poorly in my classes, my therapist suggested that I do a medical withdrawal from the semester and consider taking the next semester off as well. I actually saw a college counselor at the L&S who told me about the possibility of withdrawing for a semester or two. I was so opposed to the idea that I refused to even consider it. I refused to believe that I was unable to handle school as I previously used to be able to do. So I withdrew, went home for winter break, and returned to school the next semester.

I was diagnosed with depression in the middle of the Fall 2008 semester of my Sophomore year. I was seeing a therapist at the Tang center back then. I also took a weekly social skills workshop at Tang, which wasn't that helpful. During the Spring 2009 semester, despite eating healthy, exercising almost daily, going to talk therapy, getting adequate sleep, trying St. John's Wort and 5-HTP--which took the edge off of stress--I was feeling only worse. Because I was so resistant to take antidepressants, my therapist suggested I read the book "The Chemistry of Joy", which I did and took away some good suggestions from it, such as meditating, exercising, taking a good daily multivitamin, Omega-3, St. John's Wort, and 5-HTP. I was also involved with Theatre Rice--a theater group at Cal--which occupied most of my time and gave me social and creative outlets. Despite doing all this I felt progressively worse--feeling suicidal, lack of energy, hopelessness, meaninglessness, crying often, and unable to concentrate--so I "gave in" to antidepressants, thinking I'd give them a try as a last resort (now I hold a favorable view of antidepressants because even though they have side effects, they helped me get out of my depression). The fist one I was prescribed was Paxil, an SSRI; I then withdrew and was subsequently prescribed Effexor, an SNRI, from which I also withdrew and was put on Welbutrin, an NDRI, which helped me get out of my depression.

During the Summer of 2008 (before I was diagnosed, but with foreshadowing symptoms) I went to stay with my parents in San Diego. There I took summer school at a local community college (to satisfy some of my Berkeley requirements; the classes there are much easier than at Berkeley), and took on tutoring a couple of private students in Math. When Fall came and I told my parents that I decided to stay for a semester, my parents were mostly supportive of my decision. They were already suspecting that I wasn't feeling well and that my staying home for the semester was a possibility, since I was seeing a psychotherapist, sleeping a lot, and having a noticeable depressed mood (note: not the same as clinical depression).

Initially I was only planning to take one semester off because I was afraid that I would stay home for a long time and not return to school. But as the next semester came I realized that I wasn't ready to return, and so I thought I would return during summer for summer school. When summer came I just started feeling better and not depression for the first time, but I decided to wait until the Fall, and I returned to Cal in the Fall 2010.

In September 08 I had such horrible withdrawal symptoms from Paxil, that I couldn't go on with daily life. I called my therapist and told him that I wanted to be hospitalized--to lie in bed and have somebody take care of me--as William Styron did in his memoir "Darkness Visible". He told me that San Diego has one of the best cognitive outpatient treatment programs in the U.S., and suggested that I enroll in the Cognitive Therapy Intensive Outpatient Program (Cog-IOP) at Sharp Mesa Vista Hospital. I went there five times a week for three hours of lecture and group therapy per day, and I did this for five weeks, until the start of October 08. At the time I was in denial of being rejected by a girl I liked right before the Summer, and I had not started the grieving process and was putting it off for the fear of the pain and because I could not deal emotionally with such a big issue. Even though I did not notice a significant improvement in my depression after the program, the Cog-IOP program jump-started the grieving process for me. which took the form of daily grief journals and reading some of it aloud to my therapist. Slowly but surely, starting the grieving process started my healing and recovery from depression. By the New Year I was mostly over the loss, and because of my 3rd antidepressant--Wellbutrin--I gradually started feeling better. And one day in April I felt like the depression has lifted, although I still had residual symptoms for several months after.

During this whole time I was taking classes at my local community college, and I even took one class at UCSD through the extension program, to satisfy a major requirement. Taking classes made me feel like I wasn't wasting my time and that I was moving toward some goal, and the community college gave me financial aid, which helped me have some spending money. I was also seeing my therapist weekly, who helped me a lot. He encouraged me to "act as if" I wasn't depressed and even though it's hard try to go through my day as I would normally do. This way I would trick my mind and brain into thinking everything was normal and eventually my depression would go away. I trusted him and took his advice, which was greatly helpful. Having a caring therapist was crucial to me because it made me feel supported and believe that someone was helping me to get better. I needed to know this for my mind and body to be able to heal themselves. I guess, like Jonathan Haidt writes in "The Happiness Hypothesis", people are like a plants that will heal on their own given the right conditions. He also writes that there are three main techniques to train the elephant (our habits and the subconscious): meditation, cognitive therapy, and Prozac (antidepressants). I did all three, including meditation.

Even in your darkest moments, remember to always have hope and to believe that you will get better.