I’ve tried explaining this to others. Until someone lives with depression, they don’t understand that unstoppable bleakness. They don’t understand how you can be intelligent and still have difficulty seeing a future for yourself. They don’t catch onto the fact you choose the lowest level of jobs because you’ve long convinced yourself that the end is just around the corner anyways – why try to attain anything better if you’ll just be gone next year? Depression is the meanest opponent in my world. :-/
To this day, I feel like this is a problem for me. Since I was 9 or 10 years old, I’ve just taken it as a forgone conclusion that I’d kill myself one day, so why worry about going to college, making friends, or finding a career path? Now I’m 30 and even though I can see more clearly through my despair, and even though I don’t wrestle with suicidal thoughts like I used to, I still haven’t developed the skill of seeing/planning for more than a year or two in the future.
Whoa, every time I think it was just me…I was probably closer to 10 or 11. By high school I still thought learning was important but the depression and self-hatred got me. Didn’t have a clue about what I wanted to do with my life, living it was hard enough. I’m far older than I ever thought I’d be, somehow I’m still here. But planning beyond a year ahead is a major accomplishment. Just letting you know, I feel ya.
This would have been massively useful to read some 5 years ago… Well probably not, actually, I still would’ve fucked up, but at least I’d know I’m not alone in my fuckupedness.
I’m in my senior year of Mechanical Engineering. I have yet to even finish my resume for any jobs or the internship I need to graduate. I haven’t gone to my MWF classes in 3 weeks because I can’t face the Baja team which is what my senior design project is for and most of my classes are in that building or with my advisor for it. And I just missed the drop date for classes so my GPA can’t even be protected unless I somehow dredge up the motivation to do like 10 projects assuming the professors haven’t just written me off and will accept them late. If I have to stay another semester I’ll have to listen to my mom bitch to me about how I just need to stop wasting my time but again that comes to finding motivation to do something when I have no goals and no idea as to what I’m going to do in less than a year. To top it off, I was started seeing one of the counselors at the school (for the third time) and they had to cancel my second appointment on Thursday due to a power outage that only seemed to affect that building. And at this point in my life I know my social anxiety will prevent me from rescheduling because phone calls are awkward and so is walking in when I just did it like two weeks ago. I really wish I had been paying better attention to my student debt because currently if I kill myself I’ll still leave my parents with $30,000 to pay off so I can’t even comfort myself by telling myself there’s an end if it doesn’t get better. But I still can’t generate the motivation to fix stuff because I can’t see any future.
This week’s strip speaks to me is what I’m trying to say, I guess.
Slightly off-topic and I know this is an old post, but colleges are so terrible at mental health support. These schools get the population age bracket where mental problems are most likely to appear. The kids are usually away from all family support and loaded up with competitive/financial/social stressors. They then expect ill students to navigate a complicated academic and medical bureaucracy like fully healthy, experienced adults???
Shannon should have had a designated advocate assigned the minute he/she showed up at the clinic door, to handle messy things like suspending courses, talking to professors, and generally getting a pause placed on all academic demands, under the requirement that academics can be resumed without penalty when the condition is treated effectively.
People with depression “fail” when they’re set up to fail. And yes, I’m angry because I’ve been here and it’s only gotten worse over the past 30 years.
thank you so much for this comic… I have a history with depression, but now my best friend is suffering from a really BAD depression and I don’t know how to help him… it is awful to see him suffer so much and I feel so powerless. but strangely, reading this help me to put words on some things. I am so scared of loosing him. I understand what he is feeling so deeply and yet I don’t know how to help him… I hope that he will see a doctor tomorrow but I cant’ force him. sorry for my bad English and if this is trigerring your comics is really helping people, thank you. love
After a near-collapse, for almost a year I held myself together with a new sports hobby that I loved and in which I aimed to a truly competitive level and had quite clear long-term goals, which is unusual for me. Despite a previous old injury limiting my effectiveness somewhat, things were going good as far as the sport itself was concerned at least – lost weight, gained fitness, did OK in the sport itself – and even after losing my job I managed to keep myself active with the exercise, which is always good when depressed (heck, even when not, of course). You could say it was my lifeline.
But then I got myself injured again a few months ago. I guess my body and/or the universe just couldn’t cooperate even this once. It’s the sort of injury that puts the competitive aspect into serious question, making further attempts risky indeed. And because of that the future seems like a black hole again, I’m pretty much stuck inside four walls – crap weather surely doesn’t help motivation to go out for a run or anything – and as tired and without focus as ever 🙁
At least when I was in school I had a direction. There was a list of choices i could make: a set time for classes, and assignments I had to do. Now i am floating in a grey fog with no direction at all.
I spent decades–many decades–assuming that I’d off myself sometime soon, and so made no plans for the future. My wife would ask me things like what did I want to do when we retired and I had no answer, because I never dreamed I’d live that long. I didn’t want to burden her with my presence in her golden years.
I worked half-assed jobs instead of studying and becoming successful at something better because there was no point. I’d just end up dead before I did anything anyways. Never wrote that novel or painted that painting, despite having dreamt of being an artist all my youth. All my life, if I’m honest.
I told myself that I’d hang on long enough for the kids to graduate and move out of the house, and then I could die. But I didn’t. I even failed at that.
Now, at 65, my only consolation is that I’m nearing the end of my life, so I won’t have to put up with me too much longer. Just another couple of decades at most (alas, I come from long-lived stock).
Yea… https://t.co/6Qjd5vPz7d via @depressioncomix
I’ve tried explaining this to others. Until someone lives with depression, they don’t understand that unstoppable bleakness. They don’t understand how you can be intelligent and still have difficulty seeing a future for yourself. They don’t catch onto the fact you choose the lowest level of jobs because you’ve long convinced yourself that the end is just around the corner anyways – why try to attain anything better if you’ll just be gone next year? Depression is the meanest opponent in my world. :-/
#depression sure makes it hard to plan for a future. What I do is just take it day by day. https://t.co/ajZ0HUamnM by @depressioncomix
When that doesn’t work, you can switch to living hour by hour, or even minute by minute. Some of those minutes can be really tough.
I never wanted a career anyway, but other fun stuff would have been ok…not happening though :v
This is very true
To this day, I feel like this is a problem for me. Since I was 9 or 10 years old, I’ve just taken it as a forgone conclusion that I’d kill myself one day, so why worry about going to college, making friends, or finding a career path? Now I’m 30 and even though I can see more clearly through my despair, and even though I don’t wrestle with suicidal thoughts like I used to, I still haven’t developed the skill of seeing/planning for more than a year or two in the future.
Whoa, every time I think it was just me…I was probably closer to 10 or 11. By high school I still thought learning was important but the depression and self-hatred got me. Didn’t have a clue about what I wanted to do with my life, living it was hard enough. I’m far older than I ever thought I’d be, somehow I’m still here. But planning beyond a year ahead is a major accomplishment. Just letting you know, I feel ya.
University of Westeros?
The crest looks like Waterloo’s. The name might be University of Western Ontario.
Of course the idea is that it could be any college or university.
I hate that feeling, and did you just put Univesity of Westeros? cheeky~!
WINTER IS COMING
You’ve officially gotten cooler from that alone
WINTER TERM IS COMING
Oh god the finals alone are despair enough
This would have been massively useful to read some 5 years ago… Well probably not, actually, I still would’ve fucked up, but at least I’d know I’m not alone in my fuckupedness.
Things have been this way for me for a long time: https://t.co/kLNJiqpZE6 I have trouble thinking more than 3 days ahead.
I hate it when I have to pick out my classes for the next semester and all I can think about is “what’s the point?”
I’m in my senior year of Mechanical Engineering. I have yet to even finish my resume for any jobs or the internship I need to graduate. I haven’t gone to my MWF classes in 3 weeks because I can’t face the Baja team which is what my senior design project is for and most of my classes are in that building or with my advisor for it. And I just missed the drop date for classes so my GPA can’t even be protected unless I somehow dredge up the motivation to do like 10 projects assuming the professors haven’t just written me off and will accept them late. If I have to stay another semester I’ll have to listen to my mom bitch to me about how I just need to stop wasting my time but again that comes to finding motivation to do something when I have no goals and no idea as to what I’m going to do in less than a year. To top it off, I was started seeing one of the counselors at the school (for the third time) and they had to cancel my second appointment on Thursday due to a power outage that only seemed to affect that building. And at this point in my life I know my social anxiety will prevent me from rescheduling because phone calls are awkward and so is walking in when I just did it like two weeks ago. I really wish I had been paying better attention to my student debt because currently if I kill myself I’ll still leave my parents with $30,000 to pay off so I can’t even comfort myself by telling myself there’s an end if it doesn’t get better. But I still can’t generate the motivation to fix stuff because I can’t see any future.
This week’s strip speaks to me is what I’m trying to say, I guess.
Slightly off-topic and I know this is an old post, but colleges are so terrible at mental health support. These schools get the population age bracket where mental problems are most likely to appear. The kids are usually away from all family support and loaded up with competitive/financial/social stressors. They then expect ill students to navigate a complicated academic and medical bureaucracy like fully healthy, experienced adults???
Shannon should have had a designated advocate assigned the minute he/she showed up at the clinic door, to handle messy things like suspending courses, talking to professors, and generally getting a pause placed on all academic demands, under the requirement that academics can be resumed without penalty when the condition is treated effectively.
People with depression “fail” when they’re set up to fail. And yes, I’m angry because I’ve been here and it’s only gotten worse over the past 30 years.
thank you so much for this comic… I have a history with depression, but now my best friend is suffering from a really BAD depression and I don’t know how to help him… it is awful to see him suffer so much and I feel so powerless. but strangely, reading this help me to put words on some things. I am so scared of loosing him. I understand what he is feeling so deeply and yet I don’t know how to help him… I hope that he will see a doctor tomorrow but I cant’ force him.
sorry for my bad English and if this is trigerring
your comics is really helping people, thank you.
love
After a near-collapse, for almost a year I held myself together with a new sports hobby that I loved and in which I aimed to a truly competitive level and had quite clear long-term goals, which is unusual for me. Despite a previous old injury limiting my effectiveness somewhat, things were going good as far as the sport itself was concerned at least – lost weight, gained fitness, did OK in the sport itself – and even after losing my job I managed to keep myself active with the exercise, which is always good when depressed (heck, even when not, of course). You could say it was my lifeline.
But then I got myself injured again a few months ago. I guess my body and/or the universe just couldn’t cooperate even this once. It’s the sort of injury that puts the competitive aspect into serious question, making further attempts risky indeed. And because of that the future seems like a black hole again, I’m pretty much stuck inside four walls – crap weather surely doesn’t help motivation to go out for a run or anything – and as tired and without focus as ever 🙁
https://t.co/2o4ChRDWiX https://t.co/OYaztdETDY
My online nickname is Baron Bleeke. It describes my future perfectly
…..University of Westeros?
“To see a future.” | depression comix https://t.co/vaOn0v5Sdd
At least when I was in school I had a direction. There was a list of choices i could make: a set time for classes, and assignments I had to do. Now i am floating in a grey fog with no direction at all.
I feel like this was plucked right from my own mind. Absolutely superb.
I spent decades–many decades–assuming that I’d off myself sometime soon, and so made no plans for the future. My wife would ask me things like what did I want to do when we retired and I had no answer, because I never dreamed I’d live that long. I didn’t want to burden her with my presence in her golden years.
I worked half-assed jobs instead of studying and becoming successful at something better because there was no point. I’d just end up dead before I did anything anyways. Never wrote that novel or painted that painting, despite having dreamt of being an artist all my youth. All my life, if I’m honest.
I told myself that I’d hang on long enough for the kids to graduate and move out of the house, and then I could die. But I didn’t. I even failed at that.
Now, at 65, my only consolation is that I’m nearing the end of my life, so I won’t have to put up with me too much longer. Just another couple of decades at most (alas, I come from long-lived stock).
Fuck, I hate me.