I have been lying to you.
I’m not the happy-go-lucky ever-smiling editor that I project on to these glistening pages of awesomeness.
No.
I am depressed.
I don’t say that because John Kirwan told me to [see link]. I don’t say it so you feel sorry for me. I definitely don’t hide behind it. It is just me. Students are a high-risk group, likely to succumb to the brain-altering effects of depression. High alcohol intake, long work hours, bad diet, stress, no money, being away from home, breaking up, relatives dying, failing a paper, being dumped at your friend’s 21st in front of everyone. All that stuff piles up. Eventually something has to snap. Unfortunately for us it is generally our will to carry on.
Depression needs to be talked about, but the behavior of a depressed person should not be tolerated as normal. I have found that when locked in a downward spiral staring at a Cuba Street gutter, a few constructive words—no matter how much they hurt to hear, they are always so rational—can kick you in the teeth. Suddenly all those bad vibrations emanating from your medulla oblongata, reverberating down your spine and piercing your heart and stomach with ice, melt away and you have what alcoholics call ‘a moment of clarity’.
The thing that scares me the most about depression is that loss of rationality. Aristotle believed that there were two souls: an irrational soul, susceptible to depression, and a rational soul—impervious to mental illness, because reason is immortal. There are times when the world is lying around you, smoldering like Hades, where mortality and reason just don’t seem that compelling anymore.
The counseling service here at Vic is amazing. They provide so many services, workshops, friendly faces, advice and people who will listen to your problems. Don’t like them? Call a doctor. Do something. But don’t accept that being depressed is the end of it all. Like the Red Queen, I try to do six impossible things before breakfast. Sometimes one of those is just getting out of bed.
Depression is a jerk, but with liberal doses of Dr Dre, The Lonely Island, the Salient crew, my girlfriend and our soft toys, everything seems all right, and indeed can only get better. Only 14 more issues to go!