"It's quite clear to me that you have dysthymia"
"I have a-what?"
Those were the words my psychiatrist told me about 18 months ago. I was sitting there in front of her, completely exhausted from crying and not feeling interested about anything that had once given me pleasure, with my mother (which is also a therapist, so you could imagine the whole situation) sitting next to me.
Of course I knew what depression was. I knew a bit more than most people because of my mom, obviously - I always knew depression is not just plain sadness, or not wanting to get out of bed, or crying one time or another for no reason. I knew it was more than that. I knew what this sickness can transform people into. But I had never heard of dysthymia.
Dysthymia is, in a non-complicated language, like a chronic depression. It turns you into a sad person. But it's not a common sadness, that hits you like a bomb and than goes away eventually; it's like the ocean - there are moments of deeper sadness, like the coming and going of the waves, but it's always, always there. So, naturally, you become kind of a grumpy person, 'cause, you know, you're always feeling something's not right, something's out of place! You're always tired, your eating habits change (either you start eating too much, or too little), your sleeping habits change, and you feel like nothing's good or exciting enough to get you out of your isolation zone. It gets really hard to get in touch with people and you start to tend to misanthropy. And then it becomes a cycle - you're unhappy because you push people away because you're unhappy.
And you just don't know what's wrong, what to change; why can't I just push a button that turns off all the freaking load of bad feelings I have here?
Besides, most dysthymic people develop this disorder in childhood or adolescence, so if you ask them why they are the way they are, they'll probably answer "I don't know, I've always been like this". And that's my case.
So, now I'll tell you what it feels like. Here's one of my favorite poems to begin with.
When I was young, I said to Sorrow,
"Come I will play with thee!" --
He is near me now all day;
And at night returns to say,
"I will come again to-morrow,
I will come and stay with thee."
Through the woods we walk together;
His soft footsteps rustle nigh me.
To shield an unregarded head,
He hath built a wintry shed;
And all night in rainy weather,
I hear his gentle breathings by me.
(Sorrow, by Aubrey de Vere)
1. It feels like a nail scratching your skin - although lightly, it's continuously, so the nail scratches until it bleeds, until it gets to your muscle and it's unbearable. It's always there and it never goes away.
2. It also feels like the same nail scratching a blackboard, slowly as it could be, making a terrible and distressing sound that never ends, that's always there, that never goes away.
3. The dysthymia is a sick, heavy being that grew up with me. It's there when I make decisions - it got to a point where it made all the decisions for me -; it shows up when I try to start something new or different, it's there when I try to make new friends or when I try to open up to those who are already my friends. The dysthymia made me believe that only it could make me survive, that I could only be less miserable if I confined myself with it, alone, far from the world that keeps hurting me every other day.
"Solitude is independence. It had been my wish and with the years I had attained it. It was cold. Oh, cold enough! But it was also still, wonderfully still and vast like the cold stillness of space in which the stars revolve."
Hermann Hesse, in Steppenwolf
4. I got used to the misery. Can you imagine how awful this is? Getting used to being miserable? At certain point, I just said to myself "that's it, sweetie, you'll never be a sociable, happy person; just get over it". Nobody should get to this point. Our primary goal is to be happy - and this idea is as old as Aristotle - and if you're not happy than you should change something. But, as I didn't know what to change, because nothing seemed to work, I just though, oh well. I'll be a Sylvia Plath or a Virginia Woolf (because they were both enourmously unhappy, like many other writers and poets in history. I'm quoting them because they're my favorite). Solitude is independence. I can be whoever the hell I wanted as long as I am alone. No need to pretend, no need to wear masks. Just solitude. And misery.
5. You start to convince yourself that sorrow is actually a pretty nice thing. You know, nobody writes a Mrs Dalloway when they're happy. Happiness doesn't make you think about the meaning of life. When you're happy you just are and that's the end of it. Because I was sad, I was always looking for the reason of that, so I read a lot about it, I wrote a lot about it (for myself, of course), trying to understand what I was feeling and to make something out of it.
It actually sounded kind of intellectual to be unhappy my whole life. I could be one of those brilliant people who think a lot but have no friends. Well, as Mick Jagger would say, you can't alway get what you want.
"I am in truth the Steppenwolf that I often call myself; that beast astray that finds neither home nor joy nor nourishment in a world that is strange and incomprehensible to him."
Hermann Hesse, in Steppenwolf
6. But then, again, you realise that you want to be around people, you need to be around people. I didn't want to end up like Alex Supertramp, who had to live years by himself to finally understand that "happiness is only real when shared". But, yet, it's always been really hard to live peacefully with the people around me. I constantly feel like I'm wearing a mask, pretending to be o.k., being someone that I'm not - because who would want to be friends with someone who's sad all the time? It's perfectly understandable (at least I understand it), so I've never been mad at people around me for not wanting to be friends with me. But at the same time you want someone that accepts you the way you are, and doesn't just say "oh, come on, go wash your face and do some laundry and the sorrow will go away". I've listened so much of it since I was little that I hardly ever open up to anyone now. I always think my problems will be considered too stupid to be taken seriously. I listen and help to all of my friends, but when it comes to opening up, nah, I'll just pass...
7. Alongside with he sorrow comes the anxiety. You're sad, and you don't want to feel sad, and you feel guilty about feeling sad (because, you know, there's people dying out there and you're sad and you don't even know why, you whiny burgeois), and you can't break this cycle, you can't stop thinking about it! It's an avalanche of bad feelings and you can't help yourself. I have generalized anxiety disorder and social fobia, and I feel both of them I've developed as a consequence of dysthymia.
8. Guys, I'm not grumpy. I'm not in a bad mood, I didn't wake up in the wrong side of the bad, I'm not making a bitchface at you. I'm just always sad.
It's pretty exhausting feeling always sad. Really, it's pretty exhausting. You have to get out of bed, and go to college or school or work like it's no big deal, even though you just want to scream and ask the world to stop turning juuuuust a little bit until your mind is back on tracks. It's hard to find things funny and interesting if you're too concentrated trying to be sociable and agreeable. Of course it's part of living in a society - you have to smile and to make efforts so people will want to be near you, and that's ok, but it's a thousand times harder for dysthymic people to do that. I don't feel like saying hi to everyone, I'm not the kind of person who laughs at any joke, and I'm probably not the best choice of company to a bar or something like that, but if you try to understtand me I'll embrace you and show you everything, all the scars, all the good things hidden under my bitchface.
"You have no doubt guessed long since that the conquest of time and the escape from reality, or however else it may be that you choose to describe your longing, means simply the wish to be relieved of your so-called personality. That is the prison where you lie."
Hermann Hesse, in Steppenwolf
9. I can't stand myself. If only I could be free of my own being! I make myself sick and sad. I make myself lonely. I need a break from myself. I want to be someone else for a day - oh, if only I could be someone else for a day! If only I could rip it all off my chest. But I am condemned. I am doomed to be myself. I am doomed to solitude, to freedom, and to misery; and to always trying to avoid such fate.
10. I've been friendless for long periods of time. I got used to not having friends, truth be told. Since I was six or seven I've have relationship problems, and my oldest friends (the ones that lasted) I met two or three years ago (I'm 19). It's like I have no past. I have no history. I'm constantly beggining something from nothing and I envy those people who have childhood friends, in a good way, of course.
11. It's pretty hard not to succumb. It would have been much easier to just accomodate, get used to my miserable existence and become a sour, misanthrope intellectual. But to exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly, as Bergson would say. So I can't stop trying to change, trying to adapt, trying to be happy. I can't quit. We can't quit. Otherwise, life would be pointless.
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I don't really know why I've written this. I've read many articles in Buzzfeed where people share their problems and actually help many others just because they feel like they're not alone. I know how hard it is to not be comprehended, so I'm here to tell you, depressed, anxious and dysthymics of the world: you're not alone. I get you. We get each other. We'll make it. Feel free to contact me via facebook.
Bruna Santiago Franchini
Brazil (so I'm sorry for the mistakes I may have made).
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