Is the depressed me the real me?

[noname223]

Sometimes I don't have depression since I am taking a specific medication. I am bipolar and I have suicidal thoughts since 9 years. Today I've met an old friend and I forgot all my problems for a while. I was barely depressed almost in a good mood. I had a little bit hope that things improve. At the end of the meeting I became depressed again and I am still depressed as almost always in the evening. My life propects are horrible. My problems cannot be solved. I am sure if life goes on like that my life will end with my suicide. I sometimes think I should deceive myself that everything will work out anyways. Just like my parents do. It must feel so much better to be like that. David Foster Wallace describes similar feelings in The Planet Trillaphon. Medication gives me a break of feeling depressed. I can pretend that everything is fine and sometimes I even believe it. However I feel like the suicidal thoughts will always haunt me and come back till I die.

I don't know if I really want to be like that. Suicide is not cool and being depressed is not cool either. Why not escape these feelings with my medication for a while and pretend that everything is fine. The likely answer is the problems don't disappear and with time passing I am more and more with my back against the wall.
I tried to let go of my depressive side but it always returns. I can barely resist these thoughts. I would like to improve my life and therefore I try to be less depressed/suicidal. Maybe I achieve my goals then. I really tried to recover but life does not treat me fairly. I try so hard and I receive just more refusals and more failures. This is so cynic.

 

[FuneralCry]

Life has been unfair to me, too. Sometimes you can try to improve your life but you get nowhere. I think the thoughts of suicide are simply a part of me, it's the way I have always been. It sounds exhausting having a break from the thoughts and a little bit of hope and then they come back. This life is hard to deal with.

 

[hahabye]

I definitely feel like the depressed me is not the real me. And I think that what matters, in the end, is which you "wins".

Lately, I have been losing the connection with the "real", undepressed me. I used to be able to meet my friends and forget about my will to die, but nowadays it just doesn't work for me anymore. The thoughts about suicide are there even when I'm having a good time. It is partially because anhedonia is slowly creeping in and partially because I have my suicide planned already and am sure I will go through with it. So getting rid of those thoughts is not possible anymore.

So the depressed me has definitely overtaken and is going to win.

But I think if I had medicine that made me feel better, the way you do, I would at least try to cling on to that tiny ray of hope and see where it gets me. I hope you can still enjoy those depressionless moments you get.

 

[offshoreserver]

i think all these different aspects of you and your mood are equally "real". part of life is shifting through all these different states to some degree. i think people can learn to be a bit more comfortable by accepting this, and accepting the fluidity of these states. i understand feeling disconcerted by the change, and feeling unsure of yourself, but it might help you to be equally welcoming of the depressed and happy "you"s, since they're all you, in the end.

 

[Superdeterminist]

Identity is a tricky problem because it's an abstract notion, whereas you are a concrete thing. Really there is no 'real' you, you as a physical system are highly dynamic, and there is no physical element of you that is fundamentally 'you'. If you change over time, then the changed you is just as real as the former you, in that both of them really existed in physical space, at some point.

 

[Makko]

My life became much easier psychologically when I had an epiphany that the messed up me is the real me and any illusions of normalcy were always fake and could be discounted. It felt like most of the pressure on me just vanished with that.

 

[motel rooms]