Let's talk about depression and anxiety.
Depression and anxiety manifest in different ways for every single person.
Depression for me is sitting in my apartment, not wanting to even wake up until noon.
Depression for me is changing what I'm watching or reading four or five times in the space of an hour because I'm not satisfied with anything.
Depression for me is having dreams of creepy things, constantly.
Depression for me is putting things off and putting things off because I just don't have the energy to do them, even if it's something like putting up a shelf or organizing my room.
On the contrary, anxiety for me is not being able to sleep well at night because I keep having recurring images of spiders crawling on me from two tiny spiders in my room a week ago and waking up every time my cat meows because I think that he's seen a spider on the wall. It's staying up until the wee hours of the morning because I'm afraid of going into my room at night in case there are spiders.
Anxiety for me is sitting in my car for twenty minutes outside of Applebee's trying to work up the nerve to go in and ask about my application, in spite of the fact that I've been a waitress for the better part of five or six years now.
Anxiety for me is getting lost on the way to a familiar place even while using a GPS, getting frustrated, and then sitting in my car for another twenty minutes after I get to said place late because I'm too embarrassed to go inside after getting lost and coming late, and then finally turning around and going home instead of just going inside.
Anxiety for me is rewriting a text four times until it's right just in case it's wrong, and then changing my mind and not sending it at all.
Anxiety for me is forgetting things constantly, having to be reminded of them on a regular basis, and then still forgetting them and then having to deal with the consequences of people getting frustrated over my severe lack of memory.
Anxiety for me is thinking about Mom constantly, every hour of every day, and wondering how I will ever do this without her.
There is no catch-all for depression and anxiety. People who have it could look at this list and think "Wow, THAT'S what makes them anxious? That's so easy for me, they have no idea what REAL anxiety is! REAL anxiety is blah blah blah insert their own definition here."
People's minds don't work in the same way. One person will look at a math question and say, 2+2=4, whereas someone else will look at it and say, 1+3=4. They yield the same result even if the method is different, and neither method is right or wrong, they are just different.
There is really no comparing one person's depression or anxiety with someone else's because you can't quantify someone else's pain to suit your definition. People have told me before just how impressed they are at how strong I am, how amazed they are that I'm handling things as well as I have been, but I've always been incredibly uncomfortable with being told both of these things, mostly because what you see of me isn't necessarily everything. I'm not strong; in fact, I'm barely holding on, and I think that's what I need to hear rather than "wow, you're so strong!" Just people to tell me that they're proud of I've made it this far, even if every step that I take is painful and takes a great deal of effort and heart. I don't want to be called strong, because I'm not, but even if all I do is wake up and move from the bedroom to the living room, it's still an accomplishment, however small.
Living by myself has been simultaneously exciting and terrifying. I'm absolutely, horribly lonely, in spite of the fact that I think I've started to maybe make some friends here, if I don't manage to screw it up first. I only have my cats to talk to, my neighbors are antisocial (and loud), and I spend a lot of time wondering how exactly to go about integrating myself into a group of people that are already established as a friendship, regardless of how friendly they've been to me.
The point I'm trying to make with all of this is that age old adage: don't judge a book by its cover, and don't think that just because your anxiety/depression manifests in one way, that it's the same for everyone. Sometimes it's stronger in one person and smaller in another, but it's no less important to that person that has to deal with it. I had someone recently exclaim to me that I couldn't possibly be depressed because "I look so put together." Well, thank you for that astoundingly off-base observation, but there is no standard mold for depression, nor is there one for anxiety.
People suffer in different ways. Rather than try to tell them that their suffering is wrong because you suffer differently, respect the fact that everyone has hardships that are hardships to them, even if they aren't to you, and be that supportive person that acknowledges, even if you might not understand yourself. Sometimes all it takes is for someone to hold your hand through it and remind you that you are doing well, even if you're not doing perfectly, you are still accomplishing something by surviving at all in an unkind world.
