Depression explained

This is one of the most incredible descriptions of depression that I have ever seen written down and illustrated.

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/depression-part-two.html

Please, please, PLEASE take a few minutes out of your day to read this; whether you suffer from depression or not. There are hundreds of comments on this blog about how accurate the author's description is, about how "they relate" to it. For once it doesn't seem cliched. I relate to it too.

It describes me, right now. This week, this month. Today. But not just today, it's been like this for so long. On and off. Up and down. I searched through my old blog and came up with this; written a little over 3 years ago, trying to express my being:

For all intents and purposes, iHuman looks, acts and behaves like a real person. It can hold down a steady job and be good at it, it walks, talks, eats and drinks like a real person. But iHuman, because it is just AI after all, doesn't quite get it right. A.I. can't feel emotions. It can observe and learn and then attempt to replicate what it sees, but all it can replicate is the visible outer signs that make up emotions; the expressions and physical details that SHOW emotions, but without actually FEELING it. And as such, iHuman merely exists. So in a social setting iHuman struggles & it becomes clear that something is not quite right, because it is in these settings, amongst friends, that emotions are so important.

The parallels between that and Allie's post are obvious to me, at least. These are her words:

Months oozed by, and I gradually came to accept that maybe enjoyment was not a thing I got to feel anymore. I didn't want anyone to know, though. I was still sort of uncomfortable about how bored and detached I felt around other people, and I was still holding out hope that the whole thing would spontaneously work itself out. As long as I could manage to not alienate anyone, everything might be okay!

However, I could no longer rely on genuine emotion to generate facial expressions, and when you have to spend every social interaction consciously manipulating your face into shapes that are only approximately the right ones, alienating people is inevitable.