Pills Don't Cure No Depression, Honey Sebenele Shongwe   © Copyright 2018 by Sebenele Shongwe

Have you ever woken up to a deep pain in your heart, like you dreamt somebody had plunged a dagger through your chest and actually woke up with that feeling, but you actually had no scars? That is what I would personally describe depression as. It is a physical feeling, for your own information, cutting deep through every sensory nerve in the body, making you feel like crap every day.

Upon waking up, you realise what such a dull day everyday is going to be, feeling empty inside, no different reaction towards any other day. “What’s the point of living if life is so boring anyways”, you think to yourself. And then the world suggests to you something that seems to be the answer, but is it really? – Therapy and medication. Hmm, sounds like a resolution to a serious thing, but… well, what if pills don’t cure no depression?

Have you ever felt empty inside like you didn’t know what your purpose in life was but everybody said, “Just pop some more pills”?  Yikes, how frustrating. Well, what if pills don’t cure depression?! I felt this and I know that pills cannot change the past, the present or the future.

Depression is more than a sickness, it is a state. Of late it is more physical, a real physical battle of pain particularly in my chest and I try to fight it but every day I realise I am fighting a losing battle with this. It makes me feel like breathing hurts. I know there are people out there who would kill to breathe oxygen normally like I can, but still I cannot seem to make out if it is taking gasps of oxygen that hurts more or just the fact that I am alive. But as I think about it, it could be a little bit of both. I tarry to gasp for more breath as I hurt myself doing that. I tarry thinking, thinking of anything at all because it hurts like hell. It hurts when I try to use my own brain.

Although I am supposedly taking some medication for this I’ve truly learnt, “Pills don’t cure no depression honey”.
Have you ever sat all alone, in a lonely room and you felt the echoes of your very own thoughts. One million thoughts ( it feels like) rushing to your brain and causing you to feel the way you do – sad, angry, a feeling of betrayal, giving up and so on. And then you think, is each pill going to make each thought disappear into thin air? Then the next thought is, maybe not after all. This is the most immensely critical state of mind to be in, in life as a human being ever! It is the worst thing Mother Nature could ever bring upon a soul, I am sure now.

What if therapy does not do it? Has the world conjured up an answer to life’s greatest ill (in my thoughts). If it is not in other people taking the lives of other people, then being in situations where it could lead one to thinking of doing the same horrific act to themselves, is the worst possible ill there is out there. What if everybody thought like that? What would become of this world? Dangerously militarized groups like ISIS would be of less significance. That is why, a lot of research needs to be invested in this type of disease, I feel.

Have you ever felt that everything was moving in slow motion, like even running a simple bath, seems to take forever. It is like watching the water pour droplet by droplet into the bathtub.

Sleeping is the worst. If it wasn’t for the cold weather, sleep would unnecessary at all. Such a monotonous process of waking up to nothing at all. No achievement in life, nothing to show for at all.

But depression is a state and it is bound to leave sooner or later. I long for normal days when I’m not feeling like this. Where life is beautiful, rosy and merry. Where nothing is hard anymore. Where the simplest of even waiting in queues is no longer an awful experience anymore.

Maybe the pills need more time. Just enough to settle in there and trigger the right chemicals and the right feel good hormones to start working. Who knows? But, what do psychiatrists know anyway? How do they know their said medication will make me feel better anyways? Yes, who is not sceptical? But depression is real, and I am getting the right help for it. The right help that is available today anyways.

So the next time you bump into somebody and they are grumpy, think that maybe, just maybe something’s up. I mean statistics says around 300million people suffer from depression around the globe today.

Depression can be caused by a number of factors but particularly for me is upon realising that all this time “plain Jane” and “plain Louis”, deserve each other. Honestly, thinking about all the time spent with each other and then he would turn to break my heart like that. What about all the memories we shared, the crazy laughters we would have, holding hands on the street to go see a movie. All of that means something to me but maybe, just maybe and now I know its for sure, it doesn’t mean anything to him?

I guess it’s my mind switching onto defence mode, for myself not to feel too bad about the whole situation – plain Louis? But I guess we all know Louis was not plain at all. Even though I had told myself it is the least of feelings of pain, in the beginning, I had ever felt as a result of a guy breaking my heart, but as each day passes the pain gets pretty real, intense and raw than I’d thought it ever would.

It’s been a couple of days since the indefinite “revelation” and I don’t know why the pain just keeps getting worse and worse. It didn’t sting at first like with the other guys that have broken my heart before but now I really would classify it as a deep pain, basically something that would depress me detrimentally and definitely would deserve to be named “Pills don’t cure no depression honey”. So long to my “honey”.