Mental Health Awareness Week Day 1.
Depression
Oh please don’t ask me how I’ve been
Don’t make me play pretend
Oh no, oh what’s the use?
Oh please, I bet everybody here is fake happy too
2. Best fake smile — James Bay
No, you don’t have to wear your best fake smile
Don’t have to stand there and burn inside, oh oh oh
If you don’t like it
Both of these songs are about hiding your pain. As bad as you feel, you feel worse if you draw other people into your dark cloud. Sometimes this manifests as faking happy, faking a smile. Other times you don’t have the energy to pretend, and so you isolate with your dark cloud. Pretending you’re okay is a lot of effort. I often used “I’m just tired” as an excuse for looking down on the days I didn’t have it in me to pretend, and couldn’t isolate myself.
Help, I have done it again
I have been here many times before
Hurt myself again today
And, the worst part is there’s no-one else to blameBe my friend, hold me
Wrap me up, enfold me
I am small and needy
Warm me up and breathe meOuch I have lost myself again
Lost myself and I am nowhere to be found
Yeah I think that I might break
Lost myself again and I feel unsafe
This song is about the best account of depression I’ve found. It puts the image in my head of a small child, sitting crying in a corner, feeling such mental anguish it’s physical. A crushing but hollow, broken chest pain. A headache. It describes the feeling of being lost — a long time in depression and you don’t recognise yourself anymore. If someone asks you what you like to do, hobbies, interests, you can’t answer them. What you do is you just get through the day. And then get through the next. Anything over and above that is impossible to sustain. None of it brings you any joy anyway, so why put in the effort? Might as well save that effort to make sure you can hide your pain effectively.
Don’t put your eyes down
You’re not to blame
I know there are stories
You can’t explain
But if I should find you black and blue
And aching from crying, I’ll wait with youGrow, grow
Oh, so you know it all
Then it’s gone
Grow, grow
You know I’m here holding on
Tying up your loose ends
And you’re drifting esteem
Grow, grow
If you never try, you’ll never know
Sometimes someone just being there helps. There’s not a right thing to say. But breaking the feeling of being alone helps just a little in the moment.
5. Flint (for the unemployed and underpaid) — Sufjan Stevens
It’s the same outside,
Driving to the riverside.
I pretend to cry,
Even if I cried alone.
I forgot the start.
Use my hands to use my heart.
Even if I died alone.Since the first of June,
Lost my job and lost my room.
I pretend to try,
Even if I tried alone.
I forgot the part.
Lose my hands to lose my heart.
Even if I died alone.
Loneliness is a huge part of depression. You’ve isolated yourself, you don’t feel worth anybody’s time and you don’t want to drag them down with you. Sometimes you can cry, sometimes you want to, but you can’t — you’ve been through worse, so your body won’t react. Crying sometimes gives you a little release. Waiting to cry sucks. “I pretend to try” — again, we do what we can to hide the pain from others, we pretend to try, but every little thing is so exhausting sometimes trying is just too much.
