depression comix

Story/Art © 2017 Clay

256 "Standing still."

Published 52 Comments

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Comments

  1. The Facebook age really doesn’t help with that either. There’s a couple friends pregnant or with new babies, a few more just engaged or married, some moving, and it’s hard to feel like I’m worth much of anything in comparison.

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  7. Yeah, that ain’t fair.
    But families, careers and stuff are not the summit of one’s life, their are options. I used to have both and now I have none, and I’m better off. So think about it, it might not make sense to compare yourself to others.
    The problem here is that sometimes (many times) we struggle to live and don’t have energy to do what we want. That ain’t fair.

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    • I messaged my aunt last night because I was feeling suicidal. She said she’d talk, but then went to bed without saying goodnight.

      Her answer this morning? Settle down, get married and have kids; that’ll give me something else to focus on.

      Unclear on the concept much?

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    • People tend to get either scared or frustrated when they hear about suicidal thoughts. Your aunt has built a very high fence between you and herself. What she said was “get normally miserable as people are in my social circle”.
      There’s a comment below about marriage and kids. I can concur. I was married and got nagged about having children by my parents and my in-laws. I’m divorced now because the husband decided I’m too depressed to be lived with (and he also cheated on me with his student). Imagine I’d have given in and had children, what a hell that would have been now.

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  21. I am 47, havent accomplished my goal of my own financial independence through a career bc I got married and had kids and stayed at home, etc etc bla bla bla…and now, its that much harder! I feel like I am stuck. Every day the same, the same uggh….so yes I can relate.

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  23. I’m 25, live at home, and am 3 years still away rom graduating college. Never had a job before save like, odd jobs like house sitting. I’m exhausted from just existing. My friends are all living in their own apartments, college grads, have jobs, some are even married or going to be soon. I feel like such a failure compared to them, but at the same time I’m sorta surprised I’m still here. That’s something to be thankful for, I guess.

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  25. I dropped out of university one year before graduation due to depression, ruining my dream of becoming an engineer. Now I’m working in retail, a job that has nothing to do with engineering, barely making enough money to pay rent, living in a small, disgusting apartment. I can only work part-time due to anxiety attacks. Got divorced a year ago. Suicidal for the past three years. And yes, all my friends are working their dream jobs, getting married, saving money, advancing. I’m 30, and haven’t had a single win in years.

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  26. Wow, yeah. Know that feeling. Especially as I was starting to emerge from years of dense exhaustion/depression. For a while it felt like I was living in my own shadow. It’s better now, at least as long as I can stay with not just being alive, but also appreciating aliveness again, and as long as I can keep the idea that I “should” have come further by now at bay. Almost doing the “you shalt not pass”-thing when I notice its presence. But at times it is still really hard, and I have yet to grieve fully for all lost dreams.

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    • Exactly. The cruel thing about depression is not only that it takes up resources that others can use differently, but also that it allows one to see things only negatively. It takes joy out of lived experiences and wraps all comparisons in the cobweb of sadness and unfairness. There is a vast difference, if one interprets for example sitting on the sofa and watching sitcom as a) a well-deserved break that one can be thankful to have an opportunity to have or b) an unsatisfying substitute for something that one has no energy for and therefore a sad sign of utter failure. I’m very happy to have had an opportunity to recover and to change back from the interpretation b to a. It takes some time to grieve and learn to accept what one has lost to depression, but winning is in all the moments when one is able to look ahead and work from what happens to exist now.

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  28. What’s sadder is that sometimes its the people closest to us who compare us to others, shamelessly pointing out people better than us in hopes that we just ‘snap out of it’. Like “hey this less fortunate person is __”. “your younger relative job at __ earning __.”

    And tell us that we should already have this or that because we’re at a certain age and treat us like we never thought about it. Like “you’re X age, haven’t you thought that you __.” “what do you mean you don’t have a life goal? then make one!”

    Calling us lazy or giving us the ‘not trying hard enough’. Compounding on guilt and shame and self negativity in a spiral. its suffocating.

    Why can’t they see that it’s just hurting us more?

    But sometimes I find something good, I’ve met people and learned and discovered things I know I’d never meet/experience if I was successful. Like how people got delayed and found they got spared from some bad thing or accident. Someone got lost and you just happen to be there and knew directions/procedure. You tell someone you think they look good today or notice something nobody has. Someone dropped their cash and you gave it back. Those small things…
    So help me God, I’m holding on to that silver lining.

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  39. yep, know this…..at 49 I can’t bear it anymore. I have tried and tried, but I am still alone, but older and my career is running out….and now my body is changing. Too bad there isn’t a depression comix about people with depression getting older and having to deal with it on top of losing what little self you have.

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    • I’m right there with you. Dropped out collage 3 times due to mental illness, never did get a degree. Now I’m 50 and working at 2 entry level jobs and trying to support my family. No Facebook or anything like that for me, never even be to a high school reunion. I can’t handle the comparisons. Even when I can feel good about someone else’s accomplishments, hearing about them only reinforces my feelings of failure. One bright thing, I do have lots of life insurance so when the time comes when I cannot go on my family will be better off financially than they are with me being alive

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  40. It’s like this website knows how I’ve been living my life for years! So many things apply to me and I don’t think it’s just confirmation bias.

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  41. 52, have had to restart over and over and over again (dropped out of engineering school, dropped out of med school, quit promising careers, nearly died from self-neglect a couple of times…). Punishing myself for being fortunate enough to have had these opportunities and “wasting” them was one big burden, and mourning the loss of the person I could have been (as measured against other peoples’ yardsticks) was another.

    [Unsolicited advice warning] You can derive either despair or hope from the knowledge that there’s always the chance at another beginning. Just persisting is a victory and wherever you get to is actually good enough.

    Reply

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