I Have Depression!

During one of those unusual times when pure instinct just striked me on my head, I decided to find out the relationship between depression and memory loss. "Why?", you may wonder. Known to only a few of my close friends, I have an uncanny ability to recall autobiographical memory from my childhood days, even to the extent of the specific details of the environment, and I must say at a photographic level too. However, it seems that this strange ability was gradually lost since I started junior college education. And, I was in a terrible mood swing during those days, falling into a vicious cycle of continual denial and depression, which led to my neglect for reality and people around me. So, out of sheer curiousity, I decided to find the answer to this question. Apparently, what I found killed the cat, literally.

By chance, I managed to unearth a research article by Pierre Philippot about how "Specifying emotional autobiographical information alters emotion activation, but not as you think it does." According to the article, when people re-evoke past emotional experiences, the original emotional state tend to be automatically reactivated. When it comes to painful past experiences, this automatic link between memory evocation and emotion might motivate individuals to avoid remembering such experiences. This form of cognitive avoidance might feed into dysfunctional coping strategies and, eventually, into pathological conditions. Cognitive avoidance might also take a more subtle form, for instance activating the information at a general level, avoiding to specify it.

After I read the article, the results made me lost for words, both verbal and written. If the findings were true, I was indeed in a state of depression and it was exactly which led me to the stairwell of "doom". Further into the research, it was stated that such individuals have an increased potential for recurrent episodes of such phenomenen. And, it may become a continuous cycle.

Since my JC days, I had never been more "extinguished". It seriously affected the way I interacted and communicated with people in my life. Add to that an extremely low level of self esteem and you get a worse condition for depression. My life generally in JC was in wrecks and the army daze, I mean days, never really perked me up but it further destroyed my self image. Although my devotion in a new found religion temporarily gave me a reason to live and find a cause for, I was still in a very unhappy state of mind. I felt like I was wearing a mask whenever I was talking to people, even those close to me. I could not, or chose not to reveal my innermost thoughts to people and in the dark shell, it grew on my hatred for humanity and fed on my fears of rejection to become an even greater adversity, one which even up till today I could not defeat.

I always tended to "act" stupid and blur infront of my peers, possibly to gain some kind of attention, but that only serve to decrease my thirst for any form of human interaction. There was even a point of time in which I wanted to escape this madness into an abyss where I can be alone and live to the last of my days. Call it acquired attention deficit hypoactivity but I just chose to shut off my senses to the chaotic world and seek comfort in my self-created coop. At an age where everyone else is looking for a life-long partner to share their experiences with, I'm still stuck in this deteoriarating biological mass seeking the eternal truth. As such, I find comfort only in the knowledge that I will not dent the life of those around me, therefore resulting in very superficial friendships. I only hope that you will forgive me for my seemingly uncaring behaviour, even though I, like other humans, attempt to seek the love and care which all desires to possess. I am only afraid to harm you with my intense thoughts and reckless behaviour.

People say that you will feel better after pouring out your emotions but mine is still pretty much the same as before, dark and bottomless. The purpose of this articulation is not to gather any form of sympathy or compassion, but it is my only wish that one may come to acknowledge and understand the predicament I am experiencing. But, I predict that if it happens, it can only be called a phenomenen known as a miracle...