I'm writing this so that maybe someone reading my experience might be alerted to the fact that they also suffer from this condition and think it's totally normal. Which it's not. Before you come in here thinking I was slitting my wrist every weekend and on the verge of ending it all, I'd like to state that this wasn't even close to the case.
I didn't have a fucked up childhood, I have a supportive family, I had friends, partied like any regular person but was not addicted to hard drugs or anything of that nature. I've had every opportunity to succeed, which made it all the more surprising when I finally discovered the depression. But when I finally did, everything I found odd about my personality and habits became immediately apparent. Certain traits about me that could have just been chalked up to my personality all my life started sounding an awful lot like depressive symptoms.
I was always introverted and anxious as far back as I can remember. My parents always attributed it to an introverted personality. I always thought the anxiety was natural and I learned to deal with it more as I grew older and brushed it off as me being a nervous child. But weird shit like dialing someone on the phone would make my heart race as a kid. As I went through adolescence I noticed social events would always make me apprehensive but I forced myself into situations, as getting out of your comfort zone is the best way to approach those things as we're all told. I have no problem at all striking up conversation with someone at a bar, but in retrospect, that nagging feeling of low almost silent background anxiety never left. Plus, small talk never really built into anything meaningful (now that I think of it I didn't have anything to say because I didn't care about anything) I never thought anything of it as it had been that way as long as I can remember. It was just a part of who I was, I thought.
Another major thing was that I had a feeling of apathy all throughout my life. My parents and even I thought it was just me going into the teens and then a young adult, but as this transferred over as an adult I began becoming concerned. I knew that I should care about certain "important" things, but I just couldn't bring myself to. It's not that I didn't have interests and hobbies or enjoy things. I just found myself not concerned with things people are normally excited or ecstatic about or if I did get excited it was only to a very limited extent I also didn't have the impulse to do a lot of things. Examples:
I didn't care about peoples birthdays really. I didn't care about my own birthday. All holidays were literally just another day. Weddings were an alien concept to me. I didn't care about school. People asking what university I wanted to transfer to might as well have been speaking in another language. I wanted to make more money but wouldn't/couldn't bother to get promoted at any of my dead end jobs. I didn't care about getting a better job. I couldn't care less about sports teams. I didn't care about getting a cool new car. Even MMA which I loved watching I didn't consider myself a "fan" of or really follow. Bands that I love and jam out to I've never thought to go see live. Basically everything in life was a feeling of "eh whatever". But still I just kept thinking it was just my personality. "I'm just not a school person" or "I'm not materialistic so I don't care about money" or "I just don't care about climbing corporate ladders like the rest of these people" You can see how this would eventually begin to affect someones quality of life. I knew it wasn't laziness, as I ran consistently every day for years. So I knew something was off.
Long story short, it all came to a head and I discovered that these feelings that I always thought were my personality are actually symptoms of Dysthymia, which is a low grade chronic depressive disorder that usually affects people as children or "for as long as they can remember". So these things are often attributed to kids as a result of "that's just how he is". So they and everyone around them grow up thinking it's a personality trait/character flaw but it's actually the persons brain not firing off the correctly (fuck you i'm no brain expert) which makes it so they dont have the impulse to care or feel joy.
The thing with this type of depression (
Dysthymia) is that you are still able to function and even at a very high level. There's nothing to signify that the person may have depression like the stuff you normally think about when you think of someone who's "depressed". Like being unshaven/unkempt, wrist slitting, dressing in all black, not emerging from your room for months at a times. Often times the person himself doesn't even think that he has depression. Conan O' Brian suffers from depression and he argued with the doctor that he couldn't be depressed when he went for a check up. I shower, brush and floss religiously every night. I can't be depressed.
So you can imagine it's a little weird for me at this stage as I realized I was actually clinically depressed my whole life and didn't know it. A lot of people (myself included) think depression isn't a real tangible thing, which makes sense because words like "rape" and "depression" get thrown around so willy nilly. "Depression" should really just be changed to "Malfunctioning brain disorder" because that's really all it is. Your brain malfunctioning just like your lungs, heart, kidneys, whatever would.
Cliffs
- Was a super apathetic person for as long as I can remember (child to 30s)
- Chalked up to personality/character flaw by me and everyone around me
-Feelings of apathy and lack of impulse started affecting my quality of life
-Worked out almost every day and was drug free for years so laziness and drugs were not the issue
-Discovered it was due to persistent depressive disorder (Dysthymia)
-Never thought about suiciding or anything of the nature so I found it odd that I could be depressed or have depression
-Now realized I definitely have it and that it's a real thing
