What depression taught me
The 13 Lessons I learned
Originally written by Dr. Samar Habib at https://conscioused.org/wiki/depression/
I can’t possibly put my parents through outliving one of their children, can I? I ask myself, looking over the balcony of my 7th story apartment.
I’ve really had it with life at this point and I’m considering all my options.
Everyone has at least seen a hell hole of depression, and most of us have lived long enough to have been in one.
Hell holes of depression appear when we run away from, ignore or don’t understand the existential emptiness at the center of who we are.
The death of a loved one, a traumatic divorce, physical illness, injury, trauma, battling addiction, financial ruin or heartbreak are just some of the ways we end up in one of these metaphysical black holes of soul-sapping, living deaths.
A whole bunch of things come to a head rather suddenly. Within the span of twelve months, I leave a toxic workplace ending a career I love, leave a relationship with the most significant person in my life after a decade together, and leave my home country for good. To top it off, inside me lives an unending diatribe of self-hate, bubbling like a live volcano.
