# What depression is like



## py3ak (Oct 21, 2013)

A number of works have been written about depression in recent years, of varying clarity, consistency, and value. But I have not found anything that does better in making one _feel_ what depression is like than this moving speech from an anonymous prisoner in James Stephens' curious book, _The Crock of Gold_.

It was with a great start that he heard a voice speaking from the silence—a harsh, yet cultivated voice, but he could not imagine which of his companions was speaking. He had a vision of that man tormented by the mental imprisonment of the darkness, trying to get away from his ghosts and slimy enemies, goaded into speech in his own despite lest he should be submerged and finally possessed by the abysmal demons. For a while the voice spoke of the strangeness of life and the cruelty of men to each other—disconnected sentences, odd words of selfpity and self-encouragement, and then the matter became more connected and a story grew in the dark cell. 

"I knew a man," said the voice, "and he was a clerk. He had thirty shillings a week, and for five years he had never missed a day going to his work. He was a careful man, but a person with a wife and four children cannot save much out of thirty shillings a week. The rent of a house is high, a wife and children must be fed, and they have to get boots and clothes, so that at the end of each week that man's thirty shillings used to be all gone. But they managed to get along somehow—the man and his wife and the four children were fed and clothed and educated, and the man often wondered how so much could be done with so little money; but the reason was that his wife was a careful woman... and then the man got sick. A poor person cannot afford to get sick, and a married man cannot leave his work. If he is sick he has to be sick; but he must go to his work all the same, for if he stayed away who would pay the wages and feed his family? and when he went back to work he might find that there was nothing for him to do. This man fell sick, but he made no change in his way of life: he got up at the same time and went to the office as usual, and he got through the day somehow without attracting his employer's attention. He didn't know what was wrong with him: he only knew that he was sick. Sometimes he had sharp, swift pains in his head, and again there would be long hours of languor when he could scarcely bear to change his position or lift a pen. He would commence a letter with the words 'Dear Sir,' forming the letter 'D' with painful, accurate slowness, elaborating and thickening the up and down strokes, and being troubled when he had to leave that letter for the next one; he built the next letter by hair strokes and would start on the third with hatred. The end of a word seemed to that man like the conclusion of an event—it was a surprising, isolated, individual thing, having no reference to anything else in the world, and on starting a new word he seemed bound, in order to preserve its individuality, to write it in a different handwriting. He would sit with his shoulders hunched up and his pen resting on the paper, staring at a letter until he was nearly mesmerized, and then come to himself with a sense of fear, which started him working like a madman, so that he might not be behind with his business. The day seemed to be so long. It rolled on rusty hinges that could scarcely move. Each hour was like a great circle swollen with heavy air, and it droned and buzzed into an eternity. It seemed to the man that his hand in particular wanted to rest. It was luxury not to work with it. It was good to lay it down on a sheet of paper with the pen sloping against his finger, and then watch his hand going to sleep—it seemed to the man that it was his hand and not himself wanted to sleep, but it always awakened when the pen slipped. There was an instinct in him somewhere not to let the pen slip, and every time the pen moved his hand awakened, and began to work languidly. When he went home at night he lay down at once and stared for hours at a fly on the wall or a crack on the ceiling. When his wife spoke to him he heard her speaking as from a great distance, and he answered her dully as though he was replying through a cloud. He only wanted to be let alone, to be allowed to stare at the fly on the wall, or the crack on the ceiling. 

"One morning he found that he couldn't get up, or rather, that he didn't want to get up. When his wife called him he made no reply, and she seemed to call him every ten seconds—the words, 'get up, get up,' were crackling all round him; they were bursting like bombs on the right hand and on the left of him: they were scattering from above and all around him, bursting upwards from the floor, swirling, swaying, and jostling each other. Then the sounds ceased, and one voice only said to him 'You are late!' He saw these words like a blur hanging in the air, just beyond his eyelids, and he stared at the blur until he fell asleep." 

The voice in the cell ceased speaking for a few minutes, and then it went on again. 

"For three weeks the man did not leave his bed—he lived faintly in a kind of trance, wherein great forms moved about slowly and immense words were drumming gently for ever. When he began to take notice again everything in the house was different. Most of the furniture, paid for so hardly, was gone. He missed a thing everywhere—chairs, a mirror, a table: wherever he looked he missed something; and downstairs was worse—there, everything was gone. His wife had sold all her furniture to pay for doctors, for medicine, for food and rent. And she was changed too: good things had gone from her face; she was gaunt, sharp-featured, miserable—but she was comforted to think he was going back to work soon. 

"There was a flurry in his head when he went to his office. He didn't know what his employer would say for stopping away. He might blame him for being sick—he wondered would his employer pay him for the weeks he was absent. When he stood at the door he was frightened. Suddenly the thought of his master's eye grew terrible to him: it was a steady, cold, glassy eye; but he opened the door and went in. His master was there with another man and he tried to say 'Good morning, sir,' in a natural and calm voice; but he knew that the strange man had been engaged instead of himself, and this knowledge posted itself between his tongue and his thought. He heard himself stammering, he felt that his whole bearing had become drooping and abject. His master was talking swiftly and the other man was looking at him in an embarrassed, stealthy, and pleading manner: his eyes seemed to be apologising for having supplanted him—so he mumbled 'Good day, sir,' and stumbled out. "When he got outside he could not think where to go. After a while he went in the direction of the little park in the centre of the city. It was quite near and he sat down on an iron bench facing a pond. There were children walking up and down by the water giving pieces of bread to the swans. Now and again a labouring man or a messenger went by quickly; now and again a middleaged, slovenly-dressed man drooped past aimlessly: sometimes a tattered, self-intent woman with a badgered face flopped by him. When he looked at these dull people the thought came to him that they were not walking there at all; they were trailing through hell, and their desperate eyes saw none but devils around them. He saw himself joining these battered strollers... and he could not think what he would tell his wife when he went home. He rehearsed to himself the terms of his dismissal a hundred times. How his master looked, what he had said: and then the fine, ironical things he had said to his master. He sat in the park all day, and when evening fell he went home at his accustomed hour. 

"His wife asked him questions as to how he had got on, and wanted to know was there any chance of being paid for the weeks of absence; the man answered her volubly, ate his supper and went to bed: but he did not tell his wife that he had been dismissed and that there would be no money at the end of the week. He tried to tell her, but when he met her eye he found that he could not say the words—he was afraid of the look that might come into her face when she heard it—she, standing terrified in those dismantled rooms...! 

"In the morning he ate his breakfast and went out again—to work, his wife thought. She bid him ask the master about the three weeks' wages, or to try and get an advance on the present week's wages, for they were hardly put to it to buy food. He said he would do his best, but he went straight to the park and sat looking at the pond, looking at the passers-by and dreaming. In the middle of the day he started up in a panic and went about the city asking for work in offices, shops, warehouses, everywhere, but he could not get any. He trailed back heavy-footed again to the park and sat down. 

"He told his wife more lies about his work that night and what his master had said when he asked for an advance. He couldn't bear the children to touch him. After a little time he sneaked away to his bed. "A week went that way. He didn't look for work any more. He sat in the park, dreaming, with his head bowed into his hands. The next day would be the day he should have been paid his wages. The next day! What would his wife say when he told her he had no money? She would stare at him and flush and say-'Didn't you go out every day to work?'—How would he tell her then so that she could understand quickly and spare him words? 

"Morning came and the man ate his breakfast silently. There was no butter on the bread, and his wife seemed to be apologising to him for not having any. She said, 'We'll be able to start fair from to-morrow,' and when he snapped at her angrily she thought it was because he had to eat dry bread. "He went to the park and sat there for hours. Now and again he got up and walked into a neighbouring street, but always, after half an hour or so, he came back. Six o'clock in the evening was his hour for going home. When six o'clock came he did not move, he still sat opposite the pond with his head bowed down into his arms. Seven o'clock passed. At nine o'clock a bell was rung and every one had to leave. He went also. He stood outside the gates looking on this side and on that. Which way would he go? All roads were alike to him, so he turned at last and walked somewhere. He did not go home that night. He never went home again. He never was heard of again anywhere in the wide world." 

The voice ceased speaking and silence swung down again upon the little cell. The Philosopher had been listening intently to this story, and after a few minutes he spoke. 

"When you go up this road there is a turn to the left and all the path along is bordered with trees—there are birds in the trees.... There is only one house on that road, and the woman in it gave us milk to drink. She has but one son, a good boy, and she said the other children were dead; she was speaking of a husband who went away and left her—'Why should he have been afraid to come home?' said she—'sure, I loved him.'" 

After a little interval the voice spoke again "I don't know what became of the man I was speaking of. I am a thief, and I'm well known to the police everywhere. I don't think that man would get a welcome at the house up here, for why should he?"​
I offer this extended excerpt in the hope that it will help those who have not experienced depression themselves to have a more informed sympathy for those who do.


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## SolaScriptura (Oct 21, 2013)

Is this what it is like for you?


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## py3ak (Oct 22, 2013)

Well, I do often find myself wondering if there is any chance of being paid for weeks of absence, but I haven't yet taken to lying to my wife. 

Seriously, though, the description of extreme fatigue does an excellent job of expressing what that weariness is like, though of course the specifics will vary since most of us don't write by hand for a living.


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## Logan (Oct 22, 2013)

Thanks for sharing this. There are several people in my life right now who have depression to the point of not wanting to get out of bed. It is hard for me to understand so this is helpful.


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## PuritanCovenanter (Oct 22, 2013)

The tool is not important in the story. The fact that we all use tools and are wearied in using them may be. Fatigue and lost hope are very real issues. We all experience blindness of heart and mind on various levels. They are debilitating. The disease of melancholy is nothing new in this world. The one thing Job had when all was lost was his knowing that God was Sovereign and that he knew his Redeemer lived. I shudder to think I could lose that hope. My poor mind and heart are very feeble and prone to sin. Just reflecting on my sin is enough to make me cave. My only hope is in my Redeemer. I pray his grace doesn't allow me to lose the hope that I know that my Redeemer liveth and that he shall stand for my cause as well as the cause for those around me. Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling.


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## Gesetveemet (Oct 22, 2013)

py3ak said:


> I offer this extended excerpt in the hope that it will help those who have not experienced depression themselves to have a more informed sympathy for those who do.



At present my wife really can not understand and neither can anyone else. Yesterday marked one year that my mom departed this life. Today my dear wife has gone to visit family in two different countries for about a month. On January 31st I will be losing my job of 15 years. Even before this most days have been difficult. I know that I suffer from unbelief but sadly at the same time feel that I have sinned away any beginnings of grace I have received all away. 

Blessings,
William


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## a mere housewife (Oct 22, 2013)

We will be praying for you, William. 

The Morning reading for today from Spurgeon was very comforting to me, on Hosea 14:4 -- 'I will love them freely.' Especially comforting that the Lord said this to a people who really had sinned away their grace. Another verse I love these days: 'I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.' 

Please know you will be in our thoughts and prayers.


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## py3ak (Oct 22, 2013)

Indeed, Randy, you are correct. While the pen matters within the story, and while it is part of what gives such concrete and sensible particularity to the description, in our own circumstances the manifestation of weariness will be different. I think exhaustion is a good way to describe it. That poor clerk is exhausted physically, emotionally, intellectually, and volitionally. He is spent, and has nothing to give. That seems to me something that distinguishes deep depression from great sorrow or turbulent doubt or other strenuously unpleasant emotional states.

It was nothing like so severe, but I remember a period where I'd sit at a dinner table while other people laughed and talked and I would try very hard to think of something to say, but absolutely nothing would come to mind. I could briefly answer a question if one were put to me, but I couldn't originate any questions, observations, or comebacks. There was a tiredness in my mind that made me essentially dull and passive.

Jeremiah is another example, along with Job. I find it encouraging to think that if the Lord could keep up Jeremiah's hope and faith, when Jeremiah had witnessed so much judgment, so much horror, so much sin, and so much impenitence, that he can surely do the same for each of us.

Brother William, it sounds like you have on a number of fronts things that even in isolation can be very disquieting. I hope you have a network of support to assist you in a difficult time. I echo my wife's words about praying for you. I know it doesn't make things better, but you are certainly not the only of God's people to feel these things - the Psalms are sufficient to demonstrate that. While these feelings are not alien to God's people, and indeed while our Savior took part in this aspect also of our experience, they do not determine reality. God's mercies are new every morning, and his faithfulness is great, whatever our hearts may say. He is more willing to forgive than we can well imagine - there's a reason the famous words about God's ways not being our ways nor his thoughts ours occur immediately after a promise of pardon. After seeing our own sin, perceiving the blackness of our own hearts, it is easy to think and feel that God will not have mercy; but because his thoughts are far above ours, he does have mercy, even upon us.

_...let the wicked forsake his way,
and the unrighteous man his thoughts:
and let him return unto the Lord,
and he will have mercy upon him;
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.
*For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways,
and my thoughts than your thoughts.*_
(Isaiah 55:8,9)


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## lynnie (Oct 22, 2013)

Could I please ask anybody depressed to be sure to get a full medical examination. There are many physical things that can induce the initial depression. For example thyroid problems or metal poisoning. When I got Lyme and did not know it I could not pull myself out of bed for five days and was "sinking" but thank God a red ring appeared on my leg, I realized it was Lyme, and in two days of meds I was normal. Some depression comes from Epstein Barr/mono or encephalitis virus. I could go on but the point is to get a full check up and bloodwork. Obviously there are non physical triggers like grief and traumas and so forth, but at least rule out medical where extreme fatigue is involved. Will pray for you all.


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## a mere housewife (Oct 23, 2013)

lynnie said:


> Could I please ask anybody depressed to be sure to get a full medical examination. There are many physical things that can induce the initial depression. For example thyroid problems or metal poisoning. When I got Lyme and did not know it I could not pull myself out of bed for five days and was "sinking" but thank God a red ring appeared on my leg, I realized it was Lyme, and in two days of meds I was normal. Some depression comes from Epstein Barr/mono or encephalitis virus. I could go on but the point is to get a full check up and bloodwork. Obviously there are non physical triggers like grief and traumas and so forth, but at least rule out medical where extreme fatigue is involved. Will pray for you all.



This is very good advice.


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## InSlaveryToChrist (Oct 23, 2013)

py3ak said:


> Brother William, it sounds like you have on a number of fronts things that even in isolation can be very disquieting. I hope you have a network of support to assist you in a difficult time. I echo my wife's words about praying for you. I know it doesn't make things better, but you are certainly not the only of God's people to feel these things - the Psalms are sufficient to demonstrate that. While these feelings are not alien to God's people, and indeed while our Savior took part in this aspect also of our experience, they do not determine reality. God's mercies are new every morning, and his faithfulness is great, whatever our hearts may say. He is more willing to forgive than we can well imagine - there's a reason the famous words about God's ways not being our ways nor his thoughts ours occur immediately after a promise of pardon. After seeing our own sin, perceiving the blackness of our own hearts, it is easy to think and feel that God will not have mercy; but because his thoughts are far above ours, he does have mercy, even upon us.
> 
> _...let the wicked forsake his way,
> and the unrighteous man his thoughts:
> ...



Ruben,

This was simply an eye opener for me. I've never been sure of what it means for God's ways to be higher than ours, and it's funny I have had this text on my wall for a long time:

"let the wicked forsake his way,
and the unrighteous man his thoughts:
and let him return unto the Lord,
and he will have mercy upon him;
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon."

I know see, in light of how the text follows, what this "abundant" mercy and grace really points to, namely, the unconceivable love of God. It is, indeed, the Christian's hardest work to trust that God loves him as much as He says He does. God's love is not a thing to be grasped and argued about, it is a truth to be admitted and proclaimed.


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## py3ak (Oct 23, 2013)

InSlaveryToChrist said:


> I know see, in light of how the text follows, what this "abundant" mercy and grace really points to, namely, the unconceivable love of God. It is, indeed, the Christian's hardest work to trust that God loves him as much as He says He does. God's love is not a thing to be grasped and argued about, it is a truth to be admitted and proclaimed.



Nicely put, Samuel! What the Matthew Henry commentary has to say on 1 John 4:16 is in a similar vein:



> God’s love is thus seen and exerted in Christ Jesus; and thus have we known and believed the love that God hath to us, v. 16. The Christian revelation is, what should endear it to us, the revelation of the divine love; the articles of our revealed faith are but so many articles relating to the divine love. The history of the Lord Christ is the history of God’s love to us; all his transactions in and with his Son were but testifications of his love to us, and means to advance us to the love of God: God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, 2 Co. 5:19 . Hence we may learn,1. That God is love (v. 16); he is essential boundless love; he has incomparable incomprehensible love for us of this world, which he has demonstrated in the mission and mediation of his beloved Son. It is the great objection and prejudice against the Christian revelation that the love of God should be so strange and unaccountable as to give his own eternal Son for us; it is the prejudice of many against the eternity and the deity of the Son that so great a person should be given for us. It is, I confess, mysterious and unsearchable; but there are unsearchable riches in Christ. It is a pity that the vastness of the divine love should be made a prejudice against the revelation and the belief of it. But what will not God do when he designs to demonstrate the height of any perfection of his? When he would show somewhat of his power and wisdom, he makes such a world as this; when he would show more of his grandeur and glory, he makes heaven for the ministering spirits that are before the throne. What will he not do then when he designs to demonstrate his love, and to demonstrate his highest love, or that he himself is love, or that love is one of the most bright, dear, transcendent, operative excellencies of his unbounded nature; and to demonstrate this not only to us, but to the angelic world, and to the principalities and powers above, and this not for our surprise for a while, but for the admiration, and praise, and adoration, and felicity, of our most exalted powers to all eternity? What will not God then do? Surely then it will look more agreeable to the design, and grandeur, and pregnancy of his love (if I may so call it) to give an eternal Son for us, than to make a Son on purpose for our relief. In such a dispensation as that of giving a natural, essential, eternal Son for us and to us, he will commend his love to us indeed; and what will not the God of love do when he designs to commend his love, and to commend it in the view of heaven, and earth, and hell, and when he will commend himself and recommend himself to us, and to our highest conviction, and also affection, as love itself?


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## InSlaveryToChrist (Oct 23, 2013)

py3ak said:


> InSlaveryToChrist said:
> 
> 
> > I know see, in light of how the text follows, what this "abundant" mercy and grace really points to, namely, the unconceivable love of God. It is, indeed, the Christian's hardest work to trust that God loves him as much as He says He does. God's love is not a thing to be grasped and argued about, it is a truth to be admitted and proclaimed.
> ...


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## GloriousBoaz (Oct 27, 2013)

William, I don't really know what to say but I know I have council that is directly for you. Perhaps it comes from my own experiences of having in the past, felt that God had just let me go, but I dug in and relied on the scriptures to believe what I cannot see, that I am loved because before I was saved I didn't deserve God's grace in Christ, and if I couldn't merit it then how am I going to demerit it now; if I was a mess then and He saved me, and I am a mess now why would he forsake me. Passages such as in Jeremiah used to scare me that I would cross a line and one day God would stop listening to my prayers; but I have grown in assurance over the years and now know that The Father isn't going to stop hearing my prayers any more than He would stop hearing the very prayers of Christ, because I am hid with Christ in God. I am a little Christ, a Christian, my merit in God's eyes has only ever been because of Jesus Christ, and it is enough, and it is finished. 



> For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved [f]by His life. Romans 5:10



Hang in there William, as one who depression has been there in much of my life I can tell you that there is great reason for hope and for joy and even enjoyment. I will be praying for you my friend anything you need just PM me.


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## Steve Curtis (Oct 27, 2013)

"As God did not at first choose you because you were high, He will not now forsake you because you are low."
- John Flavel


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