What Is Depression?

it’s not all in your head.

Or rather, it is mostly in your head, but literally (not just figuratively). For the longest time, I thought that the feeling of hopelessness and apathy was something I couldn't control. It would just creep up on me, even when I was happy and had no reason to be sad at all.* It was infuriating because I couldn't make it go away, and I couldn't come to understand it.

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I felt invaded, violated by something invisible that some would say was 'all in my mind'. Noticing something internal like this when you're 14 years old and are already terrified of how the world around you works is debilitating.

I didn't know how to handle it, so I muddled through the next four years; I cried, learned lessons, went to college, and lost hold of my dancing dreams—

all with the black, smokey shadow of depression swirling through me invisibly. Then I was eighteen, and I was finally diagnosed with clinical depressive disorder. I researched it after my doctor said that it wasn't just me creating the sadness.

Scientific studies show so much more! For instance, did you know:

1. 'Experts believe stress can suppress the production of new neurons (nerve cells) in the brain'.* Neurons are what make the brain work properly, and if you have depression, you probably need something to spur on neurogenesis*.

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Neurotransmitters.

2. In people with depression, the levels of certain brain chemicals might be out of balance, particularly these neurotransmitters*: serotonin (which regulates mood, emotion, and sleep); dopamine (which affects movement, attention, and pleasure); and norepinephrine (which regulates arousal, sleep, attention, and mood)*.

Wow! It feels like college again. In any case, my poor little brain, while feeling much better emotionally, is now exhausted past the point of being science-y any longer. I hope this will help if you have any friends or family who can't quite wrap their own heads around what's going on in your head, or if you're trying to understand yourself.

Love and Hugs and Naps (Boy Am I Pooped),

Joëlle

*1."Understanding Anhedonia: What Happens in the Brain?" Tim Newman/Medical News Today. (2018)

*2."What Causes Depression?" Harvard Medical School. (2009) (2017)

*3."What Is Neurogenesis?" University of Queensland. (2017)

*4."What Are Neurotransmitters?" University of Queensland. (2017)

*5."What Causes Depression? Brain Chemistry and Neurotransmitters..." Alison Palkhivala/University Health News. (2019)

Why do Humans Exist?

DEAR
     Existentialists:
            Once again, I've been overthinking.

         I just watched Lucy; a film in which a woman dragged into a drug ring gone wrong is suddenly able to use the entire capacity of her brain. Last night, I watched a film called The Giver, about a seemingly utopian society in which emotion, color, difference, and anything that can set anyone apart from anyone else is nonexistent. After watching these, it made me think.

        We, as humans, take things for granted. We make poor choices. We create incredible things. We engineer horrible things. The human race as a whole is incredible, in good ways as well as bad. I could write a dissertation on this subject alone, but I'm going to try to concentrate on one: how we think.

           In Lucy, the title character slowly immerses herself in everything around her, until she no longer exists as a person. One of the first things to go are her emotions, after the offending drug bag is removed from her body. She uses logic, but feelings, care of consequences, and pain slowly fade away. She kills without blinking an eyelash. Her existence suddenly loses meaning to her, and she cares for only one thing: saving her knowledge. Imagine if everyone in the world were like that. I shiver just thinking about it.

            In The Giver, everyone in the society is given injections that remove the ability to feel emotion. Everyone is supposed to be the same as everyone else, so everything listed next has been removed from their world: emotion, free choice, skin color, nationality, talent, free thought, free expression, ownership of anything of any kind. That means no music, no dancing, no colors, no books, no learning, no expressing your opinion. No expansion of knowledge. No change. If twins are born, one is immediately killed.

             When someone speaks out, messes up, or gets too old, they are killed. Babies are reassigned to "family units" so that there is no personal attachment. Imagine if we lived in a world where we couldn't feel. There would be no love, no happiness, no sadness. No determination, no invention, no change. No creativity, which is the thing in all creation that I appreciate most. And the worst part about it all? No one would know any different. That would be the human existence. This creeps me out way more than Lucy, but tell me; what are your thoughts?

          Here is a short but not sweet description of how afraid I am of my own thoughts:

Neverever

The darkness blows across the water 

like a soulful wind:

waterfalls all around the ground.

Dream sweat– white imagination,

the feeling of lost 

While collecting bits and torn scraps of forgotten afternoons.

How can something so black, painful, be 

as elegant as this?

A flurry of thoughts, sediments

at the bottom of night’s ink; seething, sobbing.

What’s coming leaves me far behind;

I keep on walking through ghosts–

I am afraid of the landscape of my mind.

With Her Head Between Her Knees, Rocking Back And Forth In A Corner,

Joélle.