Commentary from November 9, 2013
Again with the same source material as #153. I was banging my head about how to find a metaphor for the problems associated with memory because I didn’t feel #153 covered it sufficiently — I needed some kind of metaphor to make it more clear. Suddenly the idea of an empty calendar came to me and what you see here. The tough part was actually thinking of things for the first calendar to make it look used. Since I myself haven’t used a physical calendar in years (thanks smartphones) I was wondering what people would write on it if they had one. The future is grey and unknown, but this is also due to said smartphone, I don’t have to remember anything as it does all my remembering for me.
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Yeah, I know this one…
Depression is like Alzheimer’s Disease, except the only thing you can’t remember is what it feels like to be happy.
I’m so glad you make these comics, they go a long way in clarifying the disease. We can’t understand it, we can only clarify it. These do that.
This comment is the most wrong thing to have ever wronged. Depression is not anything like Alzheimer’s. You want to talk about clarifying and understanding a disease maybe you should do your fucking homework.
Maybe do your own homework.
Depression affects memory by ‘impairing ability to differentiate similarities’
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/267039.php
Why Depression Ruins Your Memory
http://www.popsci.com/article/science/why-depression-ruins-your-memory-0
Depression Linked With Blurred Memory
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/07/depression-memory-blurred_n_4044670.html
Why are you using such intentionally hurtful language on a site like this?
*Wishes to give Kandis’ comment a thumbs up but cannot find such a button*
Sorry, currently WordPress and Jetpack don’t have that functionality but maybe one day they will, hopefully.
*Likes Kandis’s comment.*
I suspect that mahuika has witnessed up close and personal how Alzheimer’s has ravaged the brain and life of a loved one, and that dmgice’s comment really struck a nerve by trivializing Alzheimer’s in saying that depression is “like it, except…” Pretty much how the protagonist in the comic linked below felt his depression was trivialized when non-depressed people used “depressed” to describe things when they were actually sad, but not depressed:
http://www.depressioncomix.com/posts/144/
Although both diseases/disorders may share “memory loss” as a symptom, neither is defined as memory loss alone… they are both distinct illnesses that can present with a variety of symptoms and severities, and they both can have devastating, debilitating, even fatal consequences if left untreated.
I’m not saying that mahuika was right to use that language; I am saying that I can understand why he/she might feel compelled to do so if they’ve had personal experience with the devastating effects Alzheimer’s can cause.
I actually know how that feels. I could never imagine my futur because I didn’t expect to be alive for it.
Yes! :C And it has left me screwed up! I’m still trying to figure out what to do for college, I never planned for it ever because I expected to be dead before, by, or after graduating high school.
Yup, happened to me. Day- switch on. Night – switch off (or anxiety). Day. Night. Slow motion, confused time. I’m glad to be back to the healthy calendar, full of activities and people.
Yep. I’ve got my own little bubble of time within which I exist.
“Are you up to anything this weekend?”
“Not really sure.”
Yup. Yup. Yup.
I’m not quite at empty calendar yet.
I make plans but I almost always cancel them.
I’ve been forcing myself by signing up for events that are pricey so the wasting money part is more painful than the leaving house part.
But I have given up planning anything beyond 2 weeks.
Oh and life goals…what are those?
I just want to die peacefully in my sleep some day.
Until then, I’ll just have to stick it out day by day.
I’m currently in a bad cycle of terrible sleeping patterns, sleeping anywhere from noon to 10 pm, and the days – more like nights – just bleed together until it all feels like the same monotonous schedule of drowsy and miserable wakefulness.
I’ve been in deep depression since the start of the year and I still can’t process that it’s been 9 months of lonely misery. When you have no one to talk to (I have no familly left, no friends, no relatives, coworkers avoid me) you loose the sense of time and it’s killing me little by little.
Trust me, it gets worse during summer vacation.
I get this way sometimes, but my mental image is a movie projector. As the film comes out, instead of winding up on the take-up reel, it just catches fire.