The invisible triggers (or why depression is a bitch)

Tales from the Land of Depression; the invisible triggers that set off the waterworks

CONTENT WARNING: Depression, mental illness

Depression has a weird way with triggers. With time and experience you can start sensing when a panic or anxiety attack is building up, but depression is even sneakier and sometimes all it takes is a word, a thought, a meaningless gesture to drive you to unstoppable tears. Here's a little bit of how it's been affecting me lately.

*sigh* I was hoping I could hold off this post for some weeks, hopefully until after Halloween. But depression doesn't work that way, and after two crying fits in a row within the same week I realized maybe it could be indeed helpful to write a bit about it, both to vent and analyze the triggers that set it off.

Triggers are a weird thing. If, like me, you're affected by mental illness of the depressive spectrum, you'll have experienced first hand how it sometimes takes little to nothing for your hardly built defenses to fall. And the next moment, you're crying, and you're sobbing and no matter how hard you try to keep it together, the tears just won't stop.

This entry deals with some heavy stuff, so here's some cute animals.

I had some pretty bad experiences last year, culminating in a full blown nervous breakdown. This year was right about there too, but I tended to lay the blame a lot on the difficult situation I'm going through. To summarize - I was jobless for the greatest part of these last two years, a world away from my best friends and only family I have, the few works I was deemed suitable for turned out to be underpaid scams where I worked off my ass for crumbs - if at all. Add to it a rent to pay that isn't cheap by a long shot and my living in a country - ye olde Italy - where everything is expensive times four (from bills to "first necessity" goods) and yeah... I couldn't entirely fault depression - or not just depression - for the crying fits I had. Not that depression it itself didn't make things worse (it did), but there was just so much bad stuff going on it was just the little cherry on top of the cake.

Pictured: not a cherry on top of the cake but a very cute hedgehog

These days, meh.. things are only slightly better. I have a work which does not pay off (long story short, our bosses got in a big shitty mess with the Ministry of Finances and now our salaries are on hold until next year) and went through some pretty rough hazing from my colleagues and coworkers, at a time when I was emotionally frail and at my lowest. Again - not surprising that depression found a very fertile ground.

But then, external situations notwithstanding, my inner healing seemed to be finally going somewhere. I'll write more about that in its own post, but a kind of disdainful assertiveness, a "coldness" replaced the despair that had had me in its grip - and the strange thing was that it did so seemingly overnight. I was getting settled to it. It wasn't the same as being happy and depression-free, but considering the circumstances, it was a good enough compromise.

And then triggers happen.

The first time it was something really silly - a guy at work just flat out said he doesn't want to work with us anymore and hang the telephone in my face. Alright, he was displeased, and yes, he sounded angry, but he was still civil. He didn't tell me off the way some other people do (some day I'll also write a post on the woes of telemarketing, heh). He just said, gently but firmly, that he wasn't interested in our services anymore and to not bother him again. 

Yet something set me off so bad that I started crying desperately. At work, in front of coworkers who had for the most part acted hostile toward me pretty much since the day I was hired. But to give them credit, none of them laughed, snorted or rolled eyes. No one even made a scathing comment. They all seemed shocked, as if they understood that what was going on was a mental illness problem. As of it, I couldn't even look any of them in the eyes without breaking down in sobs again. Even staring at the papers for too long made me blink off tears. My voice threatened to break all the day at phone. I felt miserable and I wasn't even sure why, or why it had struck just then.

Sleeping the blues away

This evening it happened again - this time with a more personal trigger. I won't go into too much detail as it's personal and still a very raw topic, but I've begun to understand what people mean when they speak of "holiday blues". Of course it does not help that my birthday is exactly two days after Christmas. But at least last year I could spend it with my friend's family in the UK, and it felt really like in the past when I wasn't totally alone and even depression was more bearable. This year, since we're not getting any sort of winter vacation, I'll spend the day at work with people that I don't even particularly like, but there'll be Christmas wishes and birthday wishes and the thought suddenly made me burst in tears just like the angry customer back then had done. I left off almost one third of my dinner - then, luckily, some chat with my overseas family cheered me up somewhat, and now I'm here in the dark of my room, typing out this post on the phone. My eyes did sting a couple times, but I've not cried again and I think that's a small success.

Still... this should teach me better than to think I can ever let my guard down when it comes to depression. There's a deep sadness buried in my heart and it sometimes takes so little for the dam to break and tears to burst out. Maybe someday or other, in a weekend, I'd need to take a long, good cry for as long as I need and let it all out - but at the same time I'm weary of doing so, because I remember how spent and tired I felt after the last such breakout. Tears help, at times, but they're also incredibly painful and... how can I say?... taxing on my nerves. I feel better after crying, yeah, but I also feel much frailer and like I've been beaten up and hurt on multiple levels.

*le sigh again* And that's how messed up my situation is right now. I'm still struggling though, still not giving up. Hopefully, come tomorrow, the aloofness that I've come to consider a wall around my feelings will be back to make me feel confident and face the upcoming week at work. I just wish I could have at least one hassle-free weekend where I can simply relax, rejuvenate, and recharge for two days straight, but it seems there's always something that gets in the way.

All images are stock photos from Pexels

Ah well. Next weekend, maybe?

I'm not giving up hope. And I'm confident that you don't, too.