American Psychiatric Association delineated depression as a common mental illness that negatively affects how we feel, how we think, and how we act. It causes sadness and loss of interest in activities once tolerated. The good thing is, it can be treated.
My own interpretation to depression is different. Depression for me is being numb. It’s like not feeling nor hearing anything. It’s like a tabula rasa where everything seems blank and no one exists. I guess that is what I feel whenever my expectations battle with the reality. Oftentimes it happens when I deliberately force myself to do it, (be numb) than to feel pain. Pain that is usually the root of my numbness. Why should I let myself be in pain when I can be numb of anything that will hurt me?
What’s bad with what I feel is that, I am beginning to enjoy the numbness within. I am beginning to like how it is to be nowhere. I am beginning to love how it feels!
My sanity would like to create new world that I think is happier than what I have. I am beginning to build my own place where happiness is absent thus, sadness is the only happiness I have. When hurt has no space; where anxiety is impossible to happen. I am liking what is happening to me.
Depression is drowning me! My sanity is beginning to eat me up! 1,2,3, STOP!
What makes me go back to normal is the reality…I am a teacher, a mother, a wife, a daughter, a friend. I have to be with the people who value my worth. I need to feel how much they need me and do the same way too. I need to accept that pain isn’t only for those who cause it, but also to those who chooses to feel it. I need to tell myself that happiness isn’t an option but a choice to have. I have to live normal leaking the pain, anger, guilt, fear, disgust that will balance the happiness I long for a long time. I just need to breathe, think, and then breathe again. I have to take my time and regenerate so my desire to live more will restore. Where I can say I need numbness no more. 4,5,6, GO!
By: Jane T. Gregorio, MAEd | Teacher II | BNHS – Senior HighSchool | Balanga City, Bataan
