Nothing funny about feldspar

Wolfangel has a series of posts on how we talk (or rather, don’t talk) about depression — primarily from the point of view of the depressed person.

The posts and comments are full of good reasons why we don’t talk about depression more than superficially. However, I’m surprised that no one mentioned that we don’t talk about it because we don’t talk candidly about any chronic condition. “How are you?” is a question that most people don’t really want to know the answer to, no matter what your illness.

Also, in everyday conversation we say things like “I’m depressed because my sports team lost” or “I’m down because they don’t have that cute sweater in my size” — so there’s a general perception that depression is not really an illness, not really something to worry about and therefore not something needing discussion.*

From my own point of view (being depressed and knowing it, a situation that I didn’t learn to recognize until recently), I don’t talk about being depressed because, well, it’s boring. It’s not like I have an exciting mental illness — like mania, though sometimes I wish I did, then I might get something done for a change. I’m not even depressed “enough” to want to hurt myself, though I have fantasized that if I was injured in an accident I’d have some reason to feel this badly.

Plagioclase insists that I do have a reason — my dying-not-dying father, my mother’s illness, my long absence from home, my unsupportive sister, blah, blah, blah — but that situation has stabilized, while my emotional state has not.

So when Plagioclase asks me how I’m doing, I usually respond with “not bad” or “not good.” I don’t tell him all the stuff that’s in my head, because he’s a worrier, and I don’t want him to worry about me. He does way too much of that as it is. Besides, the crap in my head is all gray anyway, and that is really a dull story.

See? Boring.

* Unless, of course, one is suicidal. Then all of a sudden it becomes a problem, and everything the depressed person ever said becomes “a cry for help.” But you’re not really ill unless you want to kill yourself. Nope. Not ill. Just down.