Battling Invisible Ninjas

by Iain Lowson

Depression is a funny thing. It seems to affect different people in different ways. For me, it feels like being in a pillow fight with invisible ninjas. Exhausted all the time, I feel like I'm being constantly very softly buffeted, gently but firmly pushed back, held away from the things I need to do. The weight of all those pillows is pushing on me, determinedly and so, so softly sapping my will and my strength in the most irritating, infuriating way possible. Fighting against the weight feels like trying to run through a head-high wet mass of polystyrene packaging material.

For me, depression is like trying to get up from a really big beanbag while someone holds another really big beanbag on top of you. They’re your friend, and you don’t want to shout at them. Still, they keep pushing you back down, laughing at you. Your frustration is building, but they’re not taking you seriously. You can’t get up, no matter how you try, and your strength is failing, and they’re still laughing. You’re feeling weak, pathetic, intensely claustrophobic, scared, angry, and sad. Very sad. The beanbags, a little too warm and just ever-so-slightly damp, smell slightly of stale sweat and rancid milk. The one you’re lying on sucks at you, as though trying to pull you deeper in. The one on top flows around you as you struggle, the weight always pushing down on you. You almost can’t breathe.

It would be so much easier to just quit struggling. It would be so much easier to just curl up in the cloying darkness and give up. A voice inside you tells you no one would miss you. It says that you’d be doing everyone a favour if you just gave up. The voice says that everyone could stop pretending they like you and the things you do. At times, that voice can be very convincing. Everyone hears that voice from time to time. With depression, that voice turns up with a big suitcase, a megaphone, and a shit-eating grin and makes itself at home in your head for a stay of undetermined duration.

I’ve been dealing with depression since University, so for more than two decades now. Things are so much better than they used to be. I no longer have hyper-acidity, and I haven’t had a panic attack for many years. The cycle of good to bad to good has continued to change so that now the good times last for months and months, even over a year at a time, and the bad times can be down to a few days, or a week or two. In those bad times, my awareness of what’s going on is immeasurably better, and it’s easier to keep on working through than it was, say, ten years ago. In short, I’m stronger.

That’s one of the funny things about depression. It often makes for stronger people. All of the people I know with depression, each and every one intensely skilled and creative, have done incredible things. Very often the amazing things they do are as a direct result of having been to the very depths of personal despair on a regular basis. Followed around by the threat of invisible pillow-wielding ninjas makes them more determined to flip life the finger and charge on regardless. They appreciate the good times more, and the good people.

My thanks to all the good people for helping me, and anyone else with depression, to fight against invisible ninjas. Onwards!!