Been trying to remember that I wasn’t always this sick lately.

It is a very hard thing to keep in one’s mind, because nothing makes you really feel just how sick and broken and messed up you are now than the memory of when things were not nearly so bad.

So when that gets to be too hard, I try to remember times when I was a lot worse, too.

Maybe not worse off in terms of health, but at the very least, worse off in terms of lifestyle.

Like when I was stuck in Summerside, living with my parents, stuck in a place with extremely high unemployment and not much going on, completely unaware that I had a disease called depression and so blaming myself for being such a big time small town loser, and having absolutely no source of income whatsoever. That, in a word, sucked.

There is no way to describe just how depressed one can get from being completely cashless. It was the same when I was living off friends in the USA. With no income whatsoever, the depression just gets worse and worse and worse. You are so completely powerless to seek any pleasure for yourself that the reward center of your brain just starves to death and you simply cannot avoid the conclusion that you must be a terrible, terrible person if the universe never so much as throws you a half-gnawed bone.

Plus, honestly, you simply cannot grow up while living with your parents. Even if, defying the odds completely, they do not behave in any crazy ways towards you because the part of the animal brain that says “drive off your young to make way for the next generation” has kicked in, there is still programming inside your own brain that says “head out to make my own way in the world”, and that part of your brain won’t listen to all the rational reasons why it would not be practical to live on your own.

The truth is, when you live with your parents, you are defined by your relationship to them, just as you were for your entire childhood. So when you live with them, you remain, essentially, a child.

And I have never bought that whole Peter Pan bullshit of never wanting to grow up. I have always wanted to grow up. I am keenly interested in growth. To me, “grow or die” is a self-evident truth. As much as I might desire stability, predictability, and reliability in life, the truth is that everything changes, and the only way to keep things the same is, ironically, to be able to change in ways that compensate for the changes imposed upon on us from without.

And, it becomes increasingly clear to me, to be willing to make the changes in one’s life demanded by one’s inner growth as well. It is hard to sacrifice current security for future health and happiness, especially when the heavy weight of depression makes is so very hard to believe in the future at all.

But on some deep level, you have to fight back. You have to view your depression as the enemy, and you have to find the primal spark of life and defiance that refuses to give in. You have to reach deep into all the rage that comes from feeling so helpless, accept that the depression is not a part of you but a disease like cancer that has invaded you and that can be fought and defeated, and keep that spark alive even if the heat and light burns you.

It’s burning away the cancer. It’s like chemo for the soul.

You also have to face the fact that as well as being a disease, depression is an addiction. Post-diagnosis, you can become addicted to your depression and the way it offers an enormous blanket excuse to not face anything, and hence never learn to handle anything, and thus, make it even harder to face anything. It is a deadly and addictive cycle, leading deeper and deeper into the grave of your own self-destructive fear of light, hope, and the Universe itself.

Until you realize that you benefit from your depression, you will find it impossible to truly fight, because you will never make the conscious choice to give up those benefits in exchange for future happiness and personal growth.

And so, you will cling to your depression out of primal fear of losing those benefits, without knowing that this is what you are doing, and thus all efforts you make towards fighting your depression will result in a deep conflict within yourself.

A conflict you can’t even recognize for what it is. You are just in pain, and don’t know why, and don’t think there is anything you can do about it. And that is pretty much the definition of depression.

The feeling that all routes lead to an electric shock, and none lead to the cheese.

And in a way, that is why it is important to remember that you were not always so sick. It reminds you that there was a you that existed before the depression and, while you cannot go back in time and return to a happier area of your life, you can hold on to the memory that you are not your depression, and it is possible to be yourself and not be depressed at all.

For me, the happiest time was when I was at college. I had cool nerdy friends, I had my studies, I had a life. I didn’t have much cash, and there were the various stresses of college life, but still, looking back, that was the closest I have ever been to being “okay”.

Imagine what might have been if I had had the courage to come out of the closet. Ah well.

And some day, I will get back to that level of happiness. I have the cool nerdy friends, and they are a godsend. Some day, I will have the college too, or something else to occupy my life.

And this time through, the closet doesn’t fucking exist.