Things
You
Ignore
by Yonglin Chen
I can pose the question, “What is depression?” and it’ll take you about half a minute to look up the denotative meaning of the term. At the top of the page, google presents a box that holds what they think “depression” is.
Noun.
They are “feelings of severe despondency and dejection”.
Surely the definition have some truth behind it, but what does it mean to the rest of us. What of the people that are clinically diagnosed with depression—the mental disorder that holds us by our necks when we try opening our mouths to participate. It isn’t about being introverted and preferring to be alone. Feeling alone when you’re by yourself is different from feeling alone when you’re in a room full of people.
People also like to throw the words “I’m depressed” around a lot when talking about a recent disfortune; dead pet or F on a test. As described by the American Psychiatric Association section on depression, “sadness and depression are not the same.” Sadness is something that will pass, but depression is perpetual sadness. In Spanish, when talking about an emotion, something temporary, you use “estar” describe the state. Depression isn’t a mood, sadness is. A mental illness will not go away simply if you ignore it long enough.
It’s about not being able to put yourself out of bed in the morning because you woke up feeling drained. Healthy people won’t understand the burden a mental sickness can put on a person because all they can see a brooding kid that’s too lazy to socialize and make friends. It’s such a shame that a mental breakdown can’t beat a common cold when it comes to not going to school. “I felt sad,” will only earn us a call home to our parents about how it’s unacceptable to skip school. On the contrary, if I were to lie and say that I had a headache or I’m recovering from a flu, all my teachers would wish me “Feel better soon”.