I have developed a large arsenal of mental strategies to manipulate my way out of depression. I've been honing them since I was thirteen, which, for all intensive purposes, is when my "depression" began. I will argue that I actually was first clinically depressed at age eight due to a number of issues beyond my control (birth order, race, elementary school), but that doesn't seem important. The five years in between that time was unremarkable. Regardless, below are some of my coping mechanisms. They may help someone. Or they may make you feel more "normal." If depression persists for more than 10 years, you should probably start taking medication. That is not as obvious as you may think.
1. Imaginary Friend
Okay, so this was actually something I started when I was 12. It became most apparent at morning swim practices. If you think it's okay to wake a 12 year old up at five in the morning, you are wrong. Sleep is important. Without sleep, even happy people will grow worrisome. Add on the stress of being in junior high and also wasting about five hours everyday in a pool, and you get an imaginary friend as a coping mechanism. My imaginary friend was a 5-8 year old named Kaori. She would basically be around for conversation at the natatorium when I wasn't face down in a freezing pool. I don't remember us having any interesting dialogue. It was just nice to know that someone around my own age was always around (For the most part, I was swimming with high schoolers when I was 12).
Kaori is a Japanese name. I picked it not because I had an affinity for Japanese culture but because I really liked the letters in the name, specifically the ratio of vowels to consonants. Depression increases in children with uncommon names. This is unfortunate for my own children, whose names have already been selected: Zeke, Zia, Quorra, and Quinn. Which brings me to my next coping mechanism:
2. My Potential Offspring
So when I was in high school, it started occurring to me that dying might actually be a smart plan. Once when I had been unable to move from my bed for an entire weekend, I began starting to plan out how I might kill myself.
Brief aside: I am no longer suicidal. Longer aside: Once in the eighth grade I told my history professor that I didn't like being alive. So they sent me to an emergency room, not too far from where I am currently going to Medical School. Regardless, they wanted to assess how set I was on killing myself. So the man/doctor/nurse asked me if I had any actual plans for how I would die. Elora Apantaku will always answer questions, whether or not she has the correct answer. When people ask me questions, I am loathe to say I do not know. I will always pretend to know, or seek to know, or tell you something with the clarification: "I guess." So of course I gave him an answer on how I would best like to die. Overdose on insulin. Fun fact: That would actually fucking suck. SO. MUCH. I hate thirteen year old Elora. Overdose on insulin? Why not just drown? Jesus Christ. Anyway...
But I did not get very far, because I started thinking about my future. And despite all my self loathing, I kept thinking that in all honesty, I might be a good mom. I actually might be a great parent. My own parents had set the bar so low that--at the time--it seemed the only thing I had to do to best both of them was teach all of my children how to tie their own shoes.
Genetically, I'm a mess. Besides my intelligence and athletic capability, I am a sucky human being. I have diabetes, depression, asthma, eczema, psoriasis, hyperlipidemia, hypertension, anemia, allergic reactions to exercising... but only after eating shellfish... Whatever. But I couldn't help think that it was a personal challenge to make my own children better than me. I probably did not need to face childhood depression, but that is for another angsty blog post. In conclusion, all I have to do is think about my four children, two sets of boy-girl twins, and I easily step away from thoughts of suicide. But that's really all it's good for. It doesn't really help me from being depressed. It just keeps me alive.
3. Little Elora
This coping mechanism is by far the easiest to bring to mind. Because I was a melancholic child, things can only get better. Whenever I'm having a day full of self-loathing, I just imagine that I could have gone back in time and sat down and had a chat with my younger, child self. It's easy to hate and blame yourself. It's slightly harder to hate and blame your child self--especially when your child self looks exactly like you except much smaller and much more innocent. Have fun trying to hate who you were. And keep in mind the fact that you, as a kid, were blameless. You became the person you, as a child, were. So can you keep blaming yourself for being meek and uninteresting? Non-confrontational? Pathetic? This is also how I find compassion for other people who have done horrible things. When you are talking to an adult, you assume everything is their fault. You forget that they act the way they were taught to act. Their most influential teachers were probably their parents. Parents suck. You don't know what they were like growing up. But you can assume that almost every child, except for the spawn of satan, will become either a good or bad person, not because of their own volition, but because they were guided that way by the people that raised them. This is why republican parents often have republican children, and racists breed more racist spawn. Religious families would be loathe to have an atheist at their dinner table. This viewpoint takes a very "nurture" side of the debate, one of the many disagreements I have with my mother is that she is set to believe that genetics is the reason behind everything--that just because she is smart and functioning means that we should be too. Disagree.
4. Cinema
Finally, when things are really really bad, but I know that they could easily be spun to be hilarious with a good enough soundtrack, I just imagine that my entire life is actually a movie. If things are really bad, I pretend it's a sitcom with a built in laugh track. Barring absolute tragedies, all the sadness in my life would actually be quite amusing. Which is why break ups and speeding tickets no longer make me depressed enough to cry my eyes out for hours on end. All the speeding tickets I've gotten have been pathetic. All the people I have ever dated (most of them) have been hilarious mismatches. You just don't realize those things when they have just happened. So take a step back, and if you have no one to talk to, imagine that what has just happened is playing out on a movie screen. You may feel like a loser, but film can spin anything. To those people in the audience, those imaginary people, you're a protagonist. A tragic hero. Comedic relief. You may not enjoy the fact that you're trudging along in depression for the first act, but hey! If this is Hollywood, it's going to have a happy ending. If it doesn't, it'll win a ton of awards. I guess the most important point from this coping mechanism, is that your life, no matter how sad it may seem, has value. You will tell a story with your life, a great story, a love story, a cautionary tale, a puzzle, that you dare not remove from humanity's collective consciousness. You don't know how many people need you, depend on you.You won't know until you're older, and you definitely won't know if you die before your time. Life isn't fair, and it isn't always fun. But it'll always have a chance to get better. I can't say that that last sentence will always be true, but statistically, it should be.
5. Statistics
Your plane won't crash and you won't get eaten by a shark. You will live to be 80 something (if you're a woman). You will get married. You will probably get divorced. But you probably will get married again. You will have children (or not). You will have friends (if you want). You will have a source of income. You will have more happy days than sad ones, though, statistically, you will remember your sad ones better. Statistics are oddly comforting. If your mind won't be tricked by emotional ploys, let it get tricked by logic. And with logic, you should be able to see just how important you are, and how much potential your life has for you. Everything won't get better tomorrow, statistically, that's impossible. But everything will eventually right itself. You can be loved if you want to be. People need you and care about you, if you'll let them. You may forget these people exist. But they do. You are important to them. You have to see how important you are. To yourself. To me.
If not, consult medicine.
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