TW-depression, suicidal ideation

Hi,

I’m sad today. 

There’s no spotlit reason and no direct cause for it. But I am. I struggled to get out of bed this morning, struggled to get myself to work. I had a great weekend spending time with my wife. But I woke up feeling hopeless. One of the key tenets of Modern Daybreak is vulnerability, so here’s some for all of you.

I am happy to be sad today. Let me explain.

Once upon a time, there was a young and pendulous idea of a kid named Matt. He was pretty severely depressed, but didn’t accept that. He wasn’t sad, so how could he be depressed? Sure, there was sadness. Profound loss and grief in a short period of time, but most kids had that, right? Traumatized, but again, most kids, right? He tried to deny his emotions, because there was always a better answer. He wasn’t “depressed”, he was lazy. He wasn’t “suicidal”, he was just looking for attention.

 I spent my teen years being told how disappointing I was to certain people and I believed it. It all made sense, of course I’m not depressed, I’m just awful. Look at how terrible I am. But I was depressed, and I was, at times, suicidal. It was really hard not to be. My answer every single time someone asked me, “where do you see yourself in ten years?” was “I don’t know.” But of course I did. I wanted to be a rock star. I wanted to shine bright and burn out. The answer was dead. 

All of this culminated in numbness. I call it “void”. I spent my late teens and most of my twenties just numb. I didn’t feel much. I could conjure feelings in the moment, but just completely uninterested and unavailable. It came to a head in early 2020, shocker, right when the pandemic hit. In late March, I was offered a month of leave from my company because I am immunocompromised and we still didn’t know what the hell was happening. So I sat around my apartment all of April 2020. I sat…and I thought…and I felt. And it was NOT pretty. I started therapy later that month and I began to unravel and understand what had happened to me and why.

Through my therapy journey, I have accepted the task of working on myself. This hasn’t been easy, but the work is necessary. The work is the most important thing. I can feel what I need to feel and let it go, whereas it used to sit on my chest like an elephant, stopping me from feeling basic emotion. I can identify when I’m feeling numb and how to combat it, which is to be present. My wife, Jamie, told me recently about a phrase she had heard on a podcast. It was “be where your feet are.” Be present. Exist in the moment. I tend to bury myself in my little black opium rectangle and just CONSUME. The constant flash of video, article, picture, post, etc helped to stand in for the negative thoughts. But those negative thoughts are important. They’re vital, in fact. We need to feel them in the moment to weaken them, to release them from your brain. We need the negative to contextualize the positive, just like we need to understand history to see how we got to this moment. 

So I’m happy to be sad today, because I can feel it, and I can hold it and study It. It isn’t some bomb to defuse or puzzle to solve. It is simple and human. Just sadness. I can handle that. 

There isn’t a specific moment when you realize that you are doing or feeling better. But I do know that I’m trying and working every day to understand myself. I don’t feel the constant numbness I once did. Of course, there are moments or stretches of time where I feel it more. In this time, you have to be ignorant or stupid to not feel depressed at least sometimes. But I’m still hopeful. And I’m still working. Every day. 

The elephant doesn’t always sit on my chest now, and when I sit up, I realize that there’s a lot to see when you’re not staring at an elephant’s ass. 

Matt