Loving Depression: The Beginning
Updated: Nov 5, 2021
Honestly, I do not know where I should start with my journey or even know when it all started. Before anything else, you will be hearing from me in these upcoming months in this new series that I have called ''Loving Depression''.
In this series, you will be able to read about how depression helped me discover some ongoing issues in my life. Depression can make someone feel a lot of things; sadness, loss of energy or interest. I never thought that it would have helped me discover one huge problem that has been bothering me since I was a little boy. The only difference is that I was not aware of the problem then, but now I am acquainted with it and am currently working on it.
This story starts in a big house with grey walls, where I lived with my new family since moving to the Netherlands in 2017. In the last few months of 2018 I was feeling down; I walked like a ghost in the house, you literally could only sense my presence by me breathing. I did not smile anymore like I used to, I felt so confused and lost; like a bomb ready to explode. I saw everything in black and did not see life with colors anymore. I started getting mad for the smallest things - like if someone said a joke to me, I would be outraged with them already - and yelling for no reason. One day, I decided to lay the whole day in bed and listen to sad music, like ''Me vas a Extrañar'' by Banda MS. Not because this song is about love, I was not heartbroken because someone left me; I was heartbroken because of the things that I have encountered in life. One thing became more clear to me that day when I was laying in bed under the blanket.
For you to understand what became more clear to me, I need to take you down to my memory lane. It all began in my early years as a teenager while living in Aruba. During these years, I always felt that I was less than others; I felt that I was treated with less value. Maybe you don't relate but, for me, it felt that I needed to make others happy to feel good about myself; that I finally was worth something. Look at me here, treating myself as a thing – I am literally rolling my eyes right now.
The best way that I found to deal with this feeling was by focusing on school. You know, by being the nerd of the class and the teacher's pet. While this did earn me some coins when I visited my family with my reports, it did not fill my emptiness; I still felt that I needed to do more things to feel valued. Clearly, my environment was not helpful either; it sucked the life out of me, leaving me like a human husk, a human without a soul. Don't get me wrong, I have a lovely mother who loves me in her way and always had food on my table; so I am indebted for that.
Even so, everytime that I finally felt that I was worth something, someone needed to dim my light. Just by saying things like, ''Why are you so anti-social?", ''Why do you talk like a girl?'', ''Are you gay?'', ''When are you going to get a girlfriend?", "I raised a son to be a man and not a homo,'' and so the list goes on. How would you feel if you kept hearing these things every time? It went so far that once someone even had the nerve of falsely accusing me of touching a little boy sexually, just because they thought I was gay - I was still in the closet at this moment - and I thought, "How could someone think that of me?" I always treat everyone with respect and was always sweet to everyone. I did not deserve to be judged by my sexuality.
Things are getting intense right now in memory lane.
Surely, you are asking yourself right now, "How did he handle this situation!?" or maybe not, but I sure will tell you my dear what happened in the next chapter. That's right! In chapter 2 of this series, I will talk about how I handled the situation and how moving to the Netherlands opened my eyes about the ongoing issues in my life.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this blogpost are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official views of Phryme Magazine.