/lit/ - Literature

I had a girlfriend once who stopped doing all of her schoolwork and failed out of almost every class she took. She said to me that it was because of depression, and that depression was "the bane of her existence" and now that she went to her therapist who told her she was depressed, she went from battling being an unmotivated whining child to "battling depression" and everything she did was suddenly justified in her eyes.

Listen, I promise if I went to someone and told them about me I would be diagnosed with depression, but that's bullshit. It isn't imbalanced chemicals in your brain, it isn't its own thing. It's how you think, it's how you interpret the world around you. It's a part of who you are, and rather than try to fix it with prescription drugs and therapy sessions, telling yourself that instead of dealing with how shitty life is, you're dealing with some separate monster named Depression, you should examine things, think more, try to actually fix any problems you have with the way things are (if you even want to, of course).

There is a lot of bullshit in this thread. You're not any more depressed than people who aren't diagnosed, you get no justification by going to a doctor. If someone kills themselves, like DFW did, it was because that was what they needed to do, or because they couldn't see any other option, or maybe they just fucking wanted to. It's their life. They're not selfish. They're not stupid. I have no right to say anything about it, because who knows what they were thinking.

Go ahead and make a facebook status update saying "but I really have depression" in response to this if you have to, but leave me and anyone else who wants you to the fuck alone. I don't feel bad for people who are battling depression, I don't care. Now, I'm totally open to talking to someone whose sister/brother/mother/father/best friend died, someone who feels lost and hopeless, someone who is lonely, someone who feels extremely unfulfilled. Literally any reason other "I have depression." Those people need to grow up.