the lore of my depression
I like to tell myself this story of my depression whenever the blade is calling or the bottle of pills looks just a bit too appetizing. I know it’s not real and it’s just a story, but what are humans if not the stories we tell ourselves to survive?
The story goes like this: many many years ago (as every good story starts far before the reader could comprehend) a curse fell on my family. For deeds of the past or deals with devils, a demon was sent. This demon focuses on one family member at a time and its sole job is to get that person to kill themselves because, only then, can the demon gain that person’s power and move on to another victim in the bloodline. The only way to break the curse is for one of the demon’s victims to survive its wrath. If the demon fails to cause its chosen victim to kill themselves, then the demon must die with that person.
I know it is quite a scary story, but it lets me externalize my suicidal urges. For some reason, we as a society externalize almost all illnesses as an enemy to “fight.” We urge people to fight cancer and we battle arthritis and lupus, but for some reason, we blame ourselves for mental illness in a way we don’t tend to apply to more obviously physical illnesses. Now, I don’t always agree with this discourse, but I will never deny myself a coping mechanism if it works.
So the story allows me two things:
Externalizes blame for my sadness. Allows me to reject the shame of being “too weak” to overcome my depression, as the story states that it is not possible for me to overcome because I am the one of my family to host this demon.
And
Gives me a clear goal. I think in my worst moments, suicide seems so seductive because I feel I will never achieve what I want in life (I will die alone or never have a family of my own or be a burden), but this story simplifies my life’s goal to one thing: as long as I don’t kill myself then I will have kept my family safe and ended the curse, as it can’t be passed down unless the demon succeeds in causing its host to die by their own hand. So even if I am never happy, never not depressed, never amount to much of anything by societal standards, if I just manage to not commit suicide, then I’ll have protected those I love and broken a generational curse for those that come after me.
The inspiration for this story was a quote I once read that said “Suicide does not end the pain, it just passes it along.” And, while I think there could be some victim-blaming here if applied incorrectly, I think it is also a powerful tool to reset my mind in my worst hours. Because this pain may be inconceivably awful, but that just makes it all the more important that I don’t allow it to pass along. Perhaps my Christian upbringing is what makes martyrdom so appealing, but if it keeps me alive and restores some sense of personal purpose when I want to end it all, then fuck it. I’ll take it.
