Night and Day: Choosing Your Reality
So, you’re a teenager, and you’re starting to experience the whole ‘feeling like life is going too fast’ thing. Your parents refuse to talk about your confusion and stress over what is really happening in your head. And school seems pretty much on auto-pilot at this point. But now it’s time for summer vacation! If you are anything like me, though, you may be more excited about summertime than excited for school.
How awesome is it that we get to sleep in, lay in bed later on in the day, spend less time in a classroom, and eat as much candy, soda and junk food as we wish? I mean, it’s pretty much the greatest time of the year! Well… unless you suffer from depression.
Here’s what life looks like when you suffer from depression during your summer vacation: You wake up around 9 or 10 p.m., you drag yourself out of bed somewhere between 11a.m.- 2p.m., you eat leftover pizza and finish off the rest of last night’s ice cream. You spend time watching TV, surfing the internet and hanging out with your friends. You start to feel sad for no reason whatsoever, but you don’t let on to anyone in fear that they will do the same thing.
You try to go outside and hang out with your friends, but you can’t get out of bed to go anywhere. You are too tired, because you only got a couple of hours of sleep last night. So instead of doing anything fun, you just sit at home alone until it’s time for dinner again. Your parents worry about you because they think something is wrong with you. But they just don’t know what is going on inside your head….
Some days you would like to go to the beach, or take a hike in the mountains. But you can’t do that now. You just stay inside, on your computer, watching TV and eating more junk food. You feel so alone inside yourself. You want to cry, but you don’t want anyone to know how you feel now that you are home from school for the summer. You feel like you are trapped in a prison cell, you can’t leave.
If you’re like me, your depression during summer vacation is no surprise. You used to be an outgoing person, but now it’s like a switch has been flipped and you are just done with life! You want to do things, but your body is just too exhausted from not getting enough sleep and from the lack of nutrition during the winter months. So what do you do?
I didn’t used to be this way, either. As a matter of fact, I used to be just like everyone else. I was always the one out of my friends that wanted to go to the beach or on a hike. But summer vacation is my least favorite time of the year for one reason and one reason only…. depression.
When you suffer from depression during your summer vacation, you have no control over anything going on inside your head or in your life. You can’t even get yourself dressed in the morning, let alone make plans for something fun with your friends. Your parents start to worry about you because they think something is wrong with you (again). You don’t even have the energy to have a conversation with them, let alone go anywhere with them. When you are depressed, you are barely existing!
When you suffer from depression, it can be as simple as not being able to get out of bed in the morning. Although most people who suffer from depression don’t want to be in bed early, they do find themselves there more often than not. Depression can also make it harder for you to take care of yourself while at home during summer vacation. You may feel tired all the time if your sleep schedule has been thrown off because of your depression. You may eat and drink in excess, or your habits may turn to self-destructive behavior, like cutting, drinking or doing drugs. Depression can also make it hard to spend time with friends when you’re at home over the summer. You may find yourself unable to get out of the house and the only thing you want to do is sleep.
When you suffer from depression during summer vacation, you are experiencing a different type of reality than everybody else around you. Maybe they aren’t suffering from depression. Maybe they have something going on that is making it hard for them to have energy or motivation during the summer months too.
But this is YOUR reality. You have something inside of you that is making it so you don’t feel like yourself during summertime. It’s hard to spend time with friends, and even harder to get yourself in a relationship with somebody over the summer when you are depressed. People don’t want the responsibility of having to take care of you, and if you tell them how you feel, they may just shrug it off as ‘just something everyone goes through during summer vacation because they don’t have anything else to do.’
When you suffer from depression over the summer, it can make things hard to deal with when a relationship ends (for whatever reason). You may feel like you aren’t good enough for someone to even want to be your friend, much less your boyfriend or girlfriend. You want to break away from this feeling of loneliness, but you don’t really know how. You just live each day day by day until it’s finally time to go back to school.
If you suffer from depression during summer vacation, it can be hard for other people to understand what you are going through. They don’t understand why it is so hard for you to get out of the house and do things with them. They have no idea that you are constantly thinking about life, and whether or not there is any point to it. They don’t understand that depression doesn’t just happen in the winter time. They don’t understand that you need to be alone sometimes, when you just feel like there is a dark cloud hanging over your head.
If you suffer from depression during your summer vacation, it doesn’t make you weak, it makes you human. You may feel like nobody understands what it’s like to live in your own world of depression, but I do. Even though I am not suffering from depression over the summertime, I have had my very own battle with depression for years and will continue to struggle with it for the rest of my life. But that is what makes me ‘human.
Conclusion
When somebody close to you suffers from depression, it can be hard to understand the reality of their world. Although people who suffer from depression during the summer may seem down and out, it doesn’t mean that they are weak or broken. Instead, we just want to be understood and have some compassion for our struggle. But most people think it is something that you can just ‘get over’ or ignore until the fall comes around. They don’t understand that their mindset and feelings will never go away forever because they have never been trapped in the prison cell of a depressed mind.
You want to feel better about yourself, but you don’t even know where to start.