My Personal Experiences with Depression

Depression hurts. It's like God flips a switch in your head telling you to cry, and so you do. You cry for hours on end with tears flowing freely, and images of shattered hopes and dreams stick in your head like flies on scud. The tears dye the surrounding world a bleak and horrible gray. In their wake is left a desolate wasteland filled with shattered dreams and despair. Depression can drive even the most optimistic into the depths of hell and beyond. The mind of a depressed soul holds the torment of hell in it's depths, and at its worst can seem as impossible to escape from as the real thing.

When I was 14 I was diagnosed with severe bipolar disorder. I had been off and on different medications since first grade, leaving me either manic, agitated, or severely depressed throughout most of my childhood. As I began adolescence the disorder reached its peak. I would lie awake in the fetal position for hours on my bed afraid to move, afraid to come out, for fear that I would be judged by others.

This state of near-catatonia was brought on by the growing realization that I was gay. It took a lot to accept my homosexuality, because I was raised to believe that it was a sin, and that homosexuals go to hell. It wasn't my sexuality that drove me to that catatonic state of fear, it was the idea that I could not change that one character defect. I prayed for hours begging God to change me so that I could enter heaven. I hated God for making me the way that I was. I felt like He had tested me, and I failed.

My fear went on for two years, driving me mad, turning me into a hateful person who berated and abused others. My life shattered, I flunked out of high school, and transferred from school to school leaving a trail of hate with every switch. I was in the depths of despair, and I felt like life had lost all of its luster. I remember how even the act of waiting was unbearable, as though time itself would never move, and I was stuck in this gray world forever.

When my depression had reached its zenith, my parents had me court ordered to a residential treatment center, so that I could get help for my mental illness. While in treatment I fought and berated the staff members and my peers, causing havoc everywhere I went. It took me an entire year to realize that the cause of my suffering had been the refusal to accept my sexuality. I had to come to terms with who I was, and accept life for what it was. I was angry at life, at myself, at God, and most of all at the world. It never occurred to me that I had been taking my anger out on others. I always thought that the world was persecuting me, I never stopped to realize that I had been persecuting the world.

It took me quite a long time, and a lot of introspection, to realize that I had caused this trouble for myself. I would never take back this experience, it has made me what I am today and I am stronger for it.