Newsflash: Men get depression too. If you had asked me that just 3 years ago, I wouldn’t have known what depression was. I never knew that anxiety was just a part of depression. We hear so much about the blues..a case of the Mundays. But sometimes we don’t hear about the anxiety and fatigue that goes along with it.
It’s the anxiety that kills us. The feeling of being trapped, with nothing you can do to get out of a bad situation. From going through depression I know why people choose suicide to alleviate the pain. I understand why some people may seem grumpy, aloof in some aspects. It’s not that they think they’re better than you. It’s that they don’t think they have anything worthwhile to say.
It is good to know that other people are experiencing the same thing that I went through…and in some aspects am still going through. At the point I began to feel depressed I thought it was extreme stress. I never knew there was a word to what I was feeling.
Things are getting better. I am able to carry on normal life, for the most part, and smile. There are things that I fear. Loosing my job is one of the things I fear. Not that there is much chance of that at this point. I’m busier than ever. For the most part, my job is my life. I am told I need to take more vacation, yet I’m not sure what I would do without it, and I dread going back into the office and working twice as hard getting things back to normal.
“Are you planning any big trips this year?” I get asked that question alot. And yet, sometimes I feel a sense that I can’t ever venture too far from my home into an unknown area. This coming from someone who’s been to China twice, Canada and El Salvador once respectively. How does one change from being a fairly happy-go-lucky…for the most part….to a reserved cautious quiet individual? I’ve been there, done that. And I can’t explain it. Part depression and part growing up, I guess.