Commentary from Published April 28, 2016
This is pretty much states exactly how I feel. But I wanted to use this character as I promised to bring her back ever since #133, and I could never figure out an angle for her that made her unique and stand out from the others. “Recovering depressed person” is now her angle, and she’ll be in more strips from now on.
As soon as I posted this, I got this message on Tumblr:
“How is this supposed to be helpful. This makes you feel bad and depressed. I followed this blog because it helped people to understand what depression is but this is not okay. This is pulling down people even more. Whoever made this should feel like shit. Unfollowed.”
Can’t please everyone, I guess. It started a bout of drama between me and this former reader but I remain unapologetic. After all, depcom is primarily about what I experience, and I don’t see why I should rein it in if it is what I experience. I received a lot of support on Tumblr and I am still digging through the mail.
What I think that is particularly scary about this one is that there are people who really want to believe everything goes back to the way it was when depression goes away, like a bad cold. Illnesses, in reality, don’t work quite that way. They do damage to you in a number of different ways, and I have barely gotten started. You don’t wake up one day and feel peachy keen, everything is forgiven and everything is normal and nothing triggers those awful feelings again.
But if this sounds hopeless, well, to be honest, yes it does. But on the other hand, it makes recovery more understandable and expectations won’t be undoably high. There are some scars that don’t ever go away and it’s best to know that so you can deal with them when they appear.
Drawing this character was difficult because I’m not used to drawing her body shape but I know I have to try.
As soon as I posted this, I got this message on Tumblr:
“How is this supposed to be helpful. This makes you feel bad and depressed. I followed this blog because it helped people to understand what depression is but this is not okay. This is pulling down people even more. Whoever made this should feel like shit. Unfollowed.”
Can’t please everyone, I guess. It started a bout of drama between me and this former reader but I remain unapologetic. After all, depcom is primarily about what I experience, and I don’t see why I should rein it in if it is what I experience. I received a lot of support on Tumblr and I am still digging through the mail.
What I think that is particularly scary about this one is that there are people who really want to believe everything goes back to the way it was when depression goes away, like a bad cold. Illnesses, in reality, don’t work quite that way. They do damage to you in a number of different ways, and I have barely gotten started. You don’t wake up one day and feel peachy keen, everything is forgiven and everything is normal and nothing triggers those awful feelings again.
But if this sounds hopeless, well, to be honest, yes it does. But on the other hand, it makes recovery more understandable and expectations won’t be undoably high. There are some scars that don’t ever go away and it’s best to know that so you can deal with them when they appear.
Drawing this character was difficult because I’m not used to drawing her body shape but I know I have to try.
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‘Rubbage’ Interesting turn of word. I like it.
So much truth and insight in 4 panels. Amazing to read, and painful to understand.
FUCK 🙁
This one hits very close to home. <3
Wish I could solve my problems the moment they started, not 10 years later 🙁
I think we all do.
this comic is so real i need to hide all posts from this page
New characters? Pleased to meet you!
This character made her debut way back in 133.
damn, the accuracy is strong on this one
Oh, my… That’s exactly what I feel.
The word is “rubbish,” not rubbage.
Tell that to Mark Twain
Worst part of falling into a hole is climbing out of it.
Random internet person here, best part of falling down a hole is digging back up in a different direction and seeing life from a new perspective. I don’t see the logic in hanging around a place where you fell in that deep of a hole.
If only life was as easy as metaphor…
Sorry this is kind of late. I’m catching up on the strips.
Anyway, the problem with digging your way back up is having the right tools at your disposal. With depression it’s like using a spoon instead of a shovel. Worse yet, digging up takes a long time no matter what. If someone can just throw you a rope and help pull you up, you’ll get out so much faster and be able to leave without feeling nearly as exhausted, but not only does this person have to walk by and offer their help, which who knows what the odds of that are, they have to be strong enough to pull you up in the first place. They also probably need a rope, if it’s a really deep hole, and how many people just carry that around with them?
Odds are, the hole is going to ruin your day, if it doesn’t ruin your week or even several years, and when you climb back out, you have to find your way back to a normal life somehow. Some people are going to deal with this situation worse than others too, and it’s not inherently their fault if they got trapped for such a long time that they’ve simply lost all hope. Being stuck in a deep, dark hole with no one but yourself to talk to is kind of traumatic. :I
… it’s not a real hole.
You’re right. It’s a metaphorical hole… Makes it even scarier when you think about it.
Hits home too close that it’s a home invasion
This is why I subscribe <3 thank you for the feels.
Weird, I was literally just skimming the internet for yoga near me. But I finally stopped, thinking, “What’s the point, I’ll never go.” Ten-year-in-the-future-me, if she’s still alive, will be pissed.
Donna
I managed to keep a lot of my friends, mostly through already preferring to hang out with people who were familiar with and accepting of the miserable aspects of life, even before I had my serious breakdown. I’ve also stuck around for their periods of crisis, drifting, their desperate searching for solutions, their apathy and denial. I never felt fully at ease with completely happy people, nor with those who think of suffering as personal failure. I don’t know whether I should consider myself lucky for that, or unlucky for knowing from the age of about eleven that I was miserable and needed friends who accepted that. Took me until the age of 25 to break down completely, and from that seven or eight years to find a resilient and deep source of thriving within myself to replace the one I lost as a child. I had to completely rework my relationship with myself, my ideals, other people, their ideals, and the state of the world. At the bottom of that well, I managed to negotiate peace, trust and fierce loyalty with myself, and from that now flows enough peace to get me through most weeks generally at ease. I still don’t think I can ever “recover” fully, and the thought of “salvaging” the pieces of my wrecked former life just makes me tired. I’d rather just tentatively and slowly let that new trickle of thriving lead me on, and build on that a life I actually want to live, or at least am able to stand during the hard times, however inadequate it might seem to others. The hardest parts are finding the patience to let that process take whatever time it needs, to not get lost in other people’s ideas of how to recover and to not at all compare my life to what it could have been or what lives others’ lead.
I really wish I could just give that trickle of peace and ease to all of you, but that being impossible, I hope you’ll be able to find it for yourselves, your own ways.
I just wanted to let you know I saved a copy of your post on my phone because the feeling you’re describing (that trickle of thriving) really resonated with me. Thank you.
This is me. So me. Ugh. (Only I’ve never done yoga, but I am trying to get to the gym on a more regular basis.) Lost touch with many friends, old social scenes no longer apply, old career is salted earth, I have to start a new career while being a minimum of ten years older than everyone else… And I still have bad days.
But I remember the days I couldn’t get out of bed. I guess, I’ll take this struggle over that.
Is this not the view of a still depressed person? I mean when in the middle of a depressive episode there are destructive consequences (lost job/ damaged relationships) but are those years really lost? Can you not learn from that experience?
Are those doors really closed to you? Are you more limited? And if those things are true would you want to salvage anything from it?
I am asking these questions as I am in the middle of a situation where I am losing my job to a depressive episode. A part of me is trying to cling on to the terrible things that have happened and source meaning form it. Another part of me is saying to drop it and completely move on/forward/elsewhere.
(Apologies if this comment doesn’t make much sense i’m kinda new to commenting here)
I wondered why despite my efforts I was still stuck in the same place with my artwork compared to my classmates…it’s because of this. This right here.
I will graduate at the same time as them with 1% of their progress, because of my depression.
But…I like to think about it this way… Sure, my effort is “wasted” because I’m not getting anywhere, but if I were to take my effort and make it a cube, and compare it to the effort cubes of my classmates, mine’s is the same size as theirs, maybe larger than some and smaller than others, but it falls right in a healthy place on the effort cube bell curve. So I am still trying my best, with what I have. My limitations have become lowered because of my depression, but I still cap off at that limitation as often as I can. And I guess, that’s good enough. The people who snub me off as lazy and unmotivated because of a perceived lack of progress aren’t worth my time…but the people who see through my illness and understand, those are the people I will listen to.
It is easier said than done and I still have some really tough days listening to critiques from professors and classmates who chalk my “inadequate” work up to me being lazy or stupid, but I KNOW I’m putting in the same amount of effort as they are, even if it’s distributed improperly (i.e. it all goes to just GETTING UP IN THE MORNING as opposed to doing “real work”) and so their arguments become moot.
It’s a small, small comfort, but anything is something to latch onto to propel yourself forward, no matter how slow it may be.
really hits the spot to me
This… makes me want to cry in the office right now, actually.
One more reason I have no desire to get better.