Recognizing the Signs

I have been diagnosed with chronic depression. I have explained, at the minimum, my experiences with this. I think it’s time I open up to everyone. Maybe this can help save lives.

Even though I was diagnosed with depression, I never noticed my symptoms. I never felt like I had depression, until junior high.

It has only been the past few years that I have learned to recognize the signs of depression in myself. It is hard to recognize, because it is not always typical behavior of someone who is depressed. Looking back I see that I have been dealing with depression my whole life.

When I am depressed, I usually tend to lose control of myself. I act extremely hyper, I look for trouble, I starve for entertainment (no matter what I have to do to get it), and I get short with people. Sometimes I completely lash out at small incidents. Up until now, I always wondered why I acted like such a brat; why I couldn’t stop acting like that, even though I hated myself when I acted like that.
In elementary, I was not very accepted due to my lack of skill for non-verbal communication. When people started to pick on me, I fought back. This only increased the problem. I started to become depressed as I was losing friends, and I started acting out even more because of the depression. I became a total nutcase. I even had a friend of mine tell me that I had scared everyone off because I had thrown a chair across the room.

When I transferred to Onoway , I had a fresh start. Things were great until I was in the junior high/ senior high school. Typically, new students will get picked on by the older ones. Obviously I retaliated against everyone who picked on me, and the cycle started again. But this time, my depression became severe. It was so severe that not only did I have no control over myself, but I felt dead miserable. I hid in the bathroom and cried every day. I missed many classes because I was hiding in the bathroom crying. I had made such a mess of things by retaliating, and acting strangely due to my depression, that nearly the entire school made me a target to harass and pick on. This is when I started having suicidal thoughts.

The thoughts weren’t frequent, but did occur every time I sunk to my rock bottom low. This started to happen more and more. The only thing that kept me alive was fear of death, and kung fu. Things got worse and worse for me as I acted out more and more. I was getting suspended almost on a monthly basis. I was losing all my friends. And I was close to being expelled. But I just could not stop acting out.
At the end of grade eight, I was told that I could not come back the next school year. I cried so hard I couldn’t breath. I was told it was because I belong to parkland, and not northern gateway school district, but I know that is just an excuse. The whole school, even the teachers, had enough of me and couldn’t deal with me anymore. I was transferred to the outreach I go to now.

Things were great the first year, I had no problems. The next year, there were a whole lot more students enrolled. I made more friends, but also had more drama. The problems is that, I tend to forget stressful times easily. I kind of black them out (unintentionally. So I can’t quite remember the things that caused me to be depressed again at first, but it was mostly friend drama.) I went through 2 week long phases of depression, where I just felt like dying. It didn’t help that I was going through medication changes at the time.

Then the second year of high school I crashed. The difficulty level of grade ten and grade eleven had a huge gap. I struggled so bad with chemistry 20 and social 20. It didn’t help that I was given books from one version of social 20, and assignments from another format. I didn’t know this, so I assumed I was just pathetic and incapable. I convinced myself that I had reached my peak of capability in my life, and that my life was over. This was my worst phase of depression. I wanted to die every day. I broke down and cried every day. I found myself standing on the side of the road, with the intention of jumping in front of a car. I found myself standing by the edge of balconies. I thought about death every day. I spent some time coming up with the quickest, easiest, most painless way to go. I even researched exactly what happens when one overdoses on sleeping pills. I had a bottle of pills hidden in my room, ready for when I made the decision. And I started cutting.

The first time I cut was I had to where hoodies, in the summer, just to cover it up. After that I didn’t do it for a while, until I heard some bad things being said about me. And I cut myself again. I didn’t cut again for a while after that. But then the depression worsened, so I started cutting again. After over a year of this, the cutting didn’t work anymore. I no longer felt the release of negative energy that I got from it before, so I upgraded to burning. I did it once, and it felt so great. I felt like all my pain and stress disappeared (because the injury caused my body to release endorphins, just like cutting).

After that, things started to pick up. My life quickly went from a one to a ten. I quit cutting and burning for a long time. But after losing my best friends, I burnt myself once more. The day after I did this, I decided it would be the last time. Because I was afraid of how far it could go. I was afraid that, since I upgraded from cutting to burning, what would be next?

Since then my life is back in place. I have learned a lesson about how to deal with my pain in less self destructive ways. But I still go through a period of depression for a couple hours every once in a while. My friends know when I am feeling like crap because I act like a nutcase still. A lot of the time I don’t even recognize it.

But when I was having suicidal thoughts, and hurting myself, no one had a clue. I was lucky to have kung fu as a second home, and to be afraid of death, so I was able to get through it without anyone’s help. But there are so many people out there who are just like me; no one has a clue about what is really going on. The only difference is, they have nothing. They don’t have a passion and a second home. And a lot of people escalate to the point that they do not fear death. It is important to be able to recognize when someone you know is depressed and suicidal. They can be hard to miss, or easily misinterpreted. Too many people die from symptoms of depression not being properly recognized by others.

There are many signs of depression and suicidal tendencies to look for:

•Strange behavior, ranging from outrageous to mellow
•Marks drop
•Loss of interest in things
•Fascination with death (perhaps in drawings or dead bodies)
•Low self esteem
•Withdrawal
•Pessimistic attitude
•Insomnia or excessive sleeping
•Giving away belongings and cleaning up belongings
•Loss or gain of weight
•Loss or gain of appetite
•Excuses to avoid making plans or hanging with friends
•Hostility toward friends and family (so that people won’t miss them, or because of loss of control, or because of loss of control of self)
•Lack of concentration
•Lack of interest or concern
•Lack of emotion or extreme emotions
•Excessive self criticism
•Excessive criticism and complaining in general, or the opposite (they just don’t care about things that should concern them)
•Rebellion
•Promiscuous behavior
•Drug use
•Refuses help of any kind (even when unrelated to depression, ex: help with a project)
•Major mood swings
•Desperate need for attention
•Desperate need to find entertainment or happiness
•Desperation in general
•Starts committing crimes
•Spontaneous rash behaviors (ex: shaving their head or cutting of all their hair)
•Destruction of once valued belongings
•Cutting or burning (or trying to cover body parts with long sleeps or never wearing shorts)
•Short temper
•Self destructive behavoir
•Dangerous activity
•Gives up easily