Shoutings and Silences

My name is Phil and I am depressed.

One of the hardest things about depression is living inside your own head. Sometimes it can be very loud, other times it can be quieter than a graveyard. Both times are very hard to get through. When my head is loud is it like a hundred voices all talking at once. Every thought moves at a thousand miles an hour and shouts for attention. But that is actually easier to take than when my head is silent. Usually it comes at a time when my surroundings are quiet. Ever since my wife left, I’ve been living alone. That makes for a lot of quiet.

Most people live in the happy middle ground between shoutings and silences with a normal amount of noise both within and without, and if circumstances arise that unduly quiet or amplify things, normal coping mechanisms help even things out.

My normal coping mechanisms are broken, and my shoutings and silences are way more intense than other people’s, at least from what I have observed and felt.

I can only tune out the cacophony by playing very loud music and focusing as hard as possible on what I am actually hearing rather than what is mental. Alternatively, there is no way to fill the quiet with enough noise to make it less than empty. Again I try loud music or a movie or something, but there is usually too much space to fill and not enough noise to fill it. I just feel empty.

I hate being alone and I get so very lonely, and this only accentuates the silences and the shoutings. For a long time I have felt that if only my wife were to come back and I were to have another person in my life, the shoutings and silences would disappear. But recently I have begun to understand: my wife has nothing at all to do with life inside my head. She can’t help, nor can she make it worse. It is my own particular problem to solve, or failing a solution, since there often isn’t one, my own particular path to tread. To be sure, another person can help fill the silence or quiet the shouting, but that makes them just another coping mechanism when they do. At that particular moment, any person would really do.

Don’t misunderstand, I am not saying there isn’t anything special about my wife, or that a special person can’t make a special difference. What I am trying to say is this: another person can’t abate my depression. It is inside me. The shouting and the silence are my ailments.

I wish my wife would come back into my life. Having her around made things easier to deal with. But maybe that is why she has left me, in part. I tried too hard to make her my fix, tried too hard to make her responsible for how I felt. I was a fool and I was selfish and I was too stupid to know what I was doing. For that I am so very ashamed and so very sorry. But I can’t change the past. All I can do is work on my today, on my future. Only I can find ways to quiet the shoutings and fill the silences. If and when my wife or another person comes back into my life, I hope to be able to quiet the noise or fill the space on my own, and not make it that person’s burden because depression is hard enough for me to bear, and I have a pretty good idea how it works, at least for me. I can only imagine how hard it is for someone who doesn’t know it as intimately as I do.

Hannah, if you read this: I’m sorry. My silences, my shoutings were not and are not yours to bear. I’ll ask you to bear them no longer. I am sorry I ever did. It was cruel and abusive of me. I can only say I didn’t know what I was doing, but that is a feeble excuse. Thank you for all the years you tried to help me anyway. I can’t imagine what that must have been like. You are an incredible person.

To my friends and family: thanks for being there for me. Sometimes I call on you during my silences, sometimes during my shoutings. Sometimes I just need a friend. I hope I don’t make things too hard for you, or ask more than you are willing to give. Depression just needs and takes; it isn’t very considerate. My depression isn’t your burden, it is mine. Please let me know if I ever abuse our relationship. I don’t want to make the same mistakes I’ve been making with my wife. Depression is a poor excuse for abuse.

Depression fools me into thinking I am helpless and hopeless. But I am not. I am only mentally ill, and any illness can be managed, even if it can’t be cured. Easy to say; hard to do; but knowing is half the battle. Now that I know, I can work towards effective management.

Now I can start to fill the silence and quiet the shoutings.

To read what else I have written on depression, search my blog for “depression”.