Is This Normal?

Have you seen those commercials on TV for some new depression study? Or maybe it's a new drug... Anyway, it asks "where does depression hurt?" And without waiting for the answer, I answered "Everywhere." the first time I heard it. That ended up being the correct answer.

Depression fascinates me because it's like a secret club. You don't want to reveal it to just anybody - they might not understand it. They might become scared of you or uncomfortable around you. But once you find people who have been affected by it, you want to inundate them with questions.

My mom's favorite brother committed suicide at this age. 30. For most of my life, we were told that he died of cancer. As the years went by, more information came out. He suffered from depression. He was depressed over a girl. He couldn't cope.

And then the pattern came out. My grandfather was an alcoholic. He was depressed from losing all his money in the stock market. He couldn't cope. Eventually he died from liver cancer.

I scare myself and my closest friends when I get in my moods, which seem to have worsened in the past few years, thanks to a couple of bad experiences. Right now, I feel fine. I can't even imagine being that sad ever, even though I spent most of last year wallowing in the pit of despair and recently visited the pit only 2 months ago.

But when it hits, it's like the flu. I'm down, and I'm down hard. I can't imagine ever being hopeful or truly happy again. I feel purposeless and shut down. If it's bad, I reach out to my closest friends to talk. If it's really bad, I can't even bear to talk to or see anyone for days because even I'm sick of myself and the whole spontaneously breaking into tears thing.

If I'm feeling particularly lucid in my wallowing, I'll ask close friends to help me gauge "is this normal?" "I opened up a gift from a friend trying to cheer me up and I broke into tears. Is this normal?" "So-and-so snapped at me when I asked him a question, and I wanted to leave work and cry? Is THAT normal?"

I've met people who had to take depression medication, although for a limited amount of time. I'm pretty sure I don't need it at this point because bad as it gets, in the back of my mind, I know eventually I will be ok - purely because I seem to have gotten out of it before. Even if I'm feeling hopeless, there is a blind faith in that light at the end of the tunnel even if it takes months or a year. Until I physically can't snap out of it, I just have to suck it up and get tougher.

Recently, a coworker friend of mine revealed that he's been on depression/anxiety medication for about a decade now. I was shocked. He's always been the most pleasant, happy, and calm person I know at work. It throws my world upside down to know that he relies on those drugs to help him stay that way.

The flipside is that now that I know, he has no qualms telling me about his new medication or constantly checking to see if I'm ok. (Do depressed people sniff out other depression inclined people?) He knows my calm facade is just that - a facade. And now it makes me uncomfortable. And slightly scared to be around him too much for fear that he'll want to keep talking about it. Man, I suck. Is THAT normal?