How Harry Potter Cured my Depression (Or at least Remissed It)

Today, we discuss my mental illness:

DEPRESSION.

Now, before I go into Harry Potter and the wonder that it is,
We first need to discuss depression and how it affects me personally, and possibly others.

What we are talking about is stories and narratives that stem from lots of places, but culture is the key word.
Mother Culture teaches us how things work.

And the sad part is culture teaches most people to think depression looks like this.

(Cursory google search)

A sad person looking sadly in the corner. Somewhere relatively harmless.
This is not depression. This is not what it looks like. This is not it at all.
Think about the persons suffering.
Think about what they really look like.
Have you ever had a clear indicator/emblem like:

• someone sitting alone in a crowded park
• backlit by some ridiculous lighting
• holding their head 
• and looking down in shame/sorrow?

No.
No you have not.
And why?
Because this is a construction. This is a narrative perpetuated by our culture that believes depression is mere sadness that people can catch and leave behind if only they got the help they need. If only they worked at it or got the medication.
AND I BELIEVED IT! FOR YEARS I THOUGHT I DIDN'T HAVE DEPRESSION SIMPLY BECAUSE I DIDN'T FEEL LIKE THIS PICTURE.
That is the single greatest danger to this story: people with depression don't believe they have it because of their negative self-worth and not being taught to look for the signs in their thinking process.

The scary part about depression is it looks like this:

Oh Arrested Development thou heinous bitch.
It is forced. You know you are supposed to be happy. So you fake it.
Why?
Because you don't want to unburden to others. You don't want your sorrow to affect others.
And why?
Because you aren't worth it.
Which, lo and behold, makes you feel more miserable, more isolated, more depressed.
So you fake it.
You fake it.
You do.
For the sake of others, you put on a brave face and tell everyone you are all right until you are not all right. And that is not okay. Not anymore.

Because
What depression feels like is much, much scarier.
It feels like this:

Every day walking through broken glass. Every gesture or touch or interaction feels like pain.
Why?
Because it on the inside I look like this:

But, here is the saddest thing about being depressed.
You do not feel like the kid in this picture.
I did not feel like the kid in this picture.
For years, I felt like the monster in the shadows waiting to prey on little children.
But, I didn't want to.
I didn't want that to be my function in this life.
I didn't want to feel that way.
But, I didn't believe there was any other way to be.
I thought happiness and joy were for others.
They're not.
They are for everybody.
My reality looked something more like this:

Alone, cold, and afraid, lying under a bed while someone sleeps soundly above me.

• Afraid to move.
• Afraid to speak.
• Afraid to laugh.
• Afraid to love.

And why?

• Because I might wake them
• Because I might scare them
• Because I might hurt them
• Because I might kill them

It was a terrifying and awful way to live.
Nobody deserves to live like that.

I have been working for weeks to change my world view.
And it is hard.
It is so god damn hard.
Every day I struggle to fight down that gnawing sensation at the back of my skull:

• "Nobody likes you."
• "Everybody is just pretending"
• "You have no friends, they are somebody else's friends"
• "They are just waiting till you leave"

Every day those thoughts creep in and I cannot stem the tide.

All I can do is channel them.

Unlike what I did for years.

I have not changed, but how I am handling it has.

Instead, I choose to ask for help.

Ask for friends.

Ask for society. 

I am afraid every day turning down a friendly outing. Because it might be my depression. It is like an addiction. It can crop up at the most inopportune times and it could be so easy to go home and be alone and nurse my wounds for not being invited out. Or not invited out in the right way. Or not being included. 

Solutions

What can I (Miles) do to help?

Fuck included.

Fuck invitations.

I am a person.

I have a right to goodness. To kindness. To love. To joy. I will knock on people's doors. I will ask to be let in. And if people say no, that is okay too. It doesn't make me a monster for bothering them during finals or asking on the wrong day or at the wrong time. It just means that they are busy and that they are handling them for the moment. 

I am handling me for the moment.

But, I need help.

I need friends. 

I need loved ones.

What can you do to help?

Just include those who are depressed.

Make sure that they get out. That they shower. That they eat. That they feel loved.

It does not matter.

I remember in the midst of my depression I came up with a saying:

"More than anything, I just want this moment to be over."

It felt dismissive, like I was isolating the problem. But, really, I was dealing with it.
I have dealt with depression for the majority of my life and on any given day, I can handle it. But, if we are going to have fun and make me feel included instead of isolated and worried that I am a burden, the last thing I want to do is talk about my sadness. I have clinicians for that. Therapists, specialists. If you want to have a significant and meaningful conversation, we can do that. But, don't invite me over to "help" and then pretend you have a clinical degree. It doesn't work. It doesn't help. It makes me feel sad. Instead, try anything.
Anything else.

• board games
• movie nights
• clubbing
• dancing
• lunch
• tea
• coffee
• tuba lessons

It doesn't matter what it is. Just make sure that the friend is included. That they can accomplish it. And if they throw up friction, get them to do it anyway. It feels better once it is happening. It feels better once it is over. The initial part is the hardest. The admitting of the problem, the getting out and seeing people. It all takes energy. Energy that we have been directing negatively at ourselves for a while. It takes retraining to redirect that energy. And it can be hard.

These last few weeks have been incredibly difficult. 

I have been struggling to be open and inviting in the last few weeks because I cannot afford not to be.

I have destroyed relationships, thrown up road blocks, and isolated myself for years because I did not think that I was worth the effort.

Worth the time or the place or the anything.

That isn't true. 

Other people recognized it.
That is why they stayed my friends.

Now, I need to embrace that fact and start working at repairing those beautiful, wonderful, precious relationships.

Some things I learned from my depression

D: Depression lesson

L: What I learned coming out

D: My love is hurtful. (I have claws and if I hug others, they will get hurt, better to hurt myself and save others.)

L: Love is not in and of itself harmful. (I do not have claws, I have been harming myself for no good reason)

D: We are all broken. 

L: We are not broken. (Instead, we are, all of us, children, running wildly and playing, some fall and get hurt and we take care of them. Recognizing that the hurt comes from playing, but is not the playing or the children is the most important lesson.)

D: Happiness is for other people.

L: Happiness is always there provided we are daring enough to reach for it.

How I snapped out of depression

I operate on stories. That is how I live my life. It is how I understand my universe.

Story is the key.

"Life is Story." -Miles Boucher

That is what I believe.
In the midst of my depression, I believed my place in the story was as villain. The ultimate villain. I was the worst human being. Worse. I was less than human. I was a monster.
For years people told me I wasn't.
I didn't believe them.
And then, someone compared, not me mind you, but in my head I heard:

"Miles is like Tom Riddle's diary."

For those who don't know, Tom Marvolo Riddle is Lord Voldemort. The single greatest villain in recent story.
For those who haven't read Harry Potter (you know who you are) here is a primer
Born Tom Riddle, the boy remade himself into Lord Voldemort through years of magical experimentation as the greatest dark wizard, powerful, hungry, malevolent, seemingly invulnerable.
In the end, he fractured his soul and poured its essence through the murder of others into objects in order to protect his essence (horcruxes).
He was incapable of feeling love because his mother used a love potion to "get" him (Shakespearean sense).
He is tragic, beautiful, and defeated not by malice or vindictiveness, but by love. He is defeated because he was incapable of feeling love and because of that he was alone.

Tom Riddle is without doubt one of the single greatest portrayals of a villain...ever.
If I had been compared to Tom Riddle, I would have been over the moon. Somebody would have hit it on the head. That is how I see myself. That is how I cast myself. This beautifully tragic, hopelessly cursed individual who is worthy of pity, but who has to die because that is the story's function.

Instead, I felt compared to the diary. The horcrux. A repository for Tom Riddle's soul. The diary functions like a parasite, feeding off of every negative emotion and draining its host of that energy until at long last, it leaves them: a dry, empty husk, devoid of the personality and vibrancy that makes that person (Ginny) so very, very special.
Now, let me reiterate, I was not being compared to the diary. But, in my warped, narcissistic state, I believed that I was.
And so, instead of being the beautifully tragic Tom Riddle, I was instead his parasitic leftovers.

It was worse than the worst thing I could imagine.
For the first time in my life somebody hadn't said:

"No, you aren't the worst thing. You are a good person!"

And instead had slapped me upside my head and said:

"No, you are worse than you imagined."

Suddenly, I was suffused with feelings of self worth.
For the first time I felt like I was higher on the scale than somebody was giving me credit.
I didn't need to take myself lower, I needed to build myself up.
And so, I started arguing.
For myself.
For the first time in my life.

I am not Tom Riddle's Diary. I am not Tom Riddle.
According to Pottermore, I am a Slytherin.
But, let us remember: Draco is Slytherin.
Regulus Black is Slytherin.
Severus Snape is Slytherin.
Harry was Slytherin.
It is the choices we make that determine where we belong.

The house system was disbanded after Headmaster Snape.
And the single greatest tragedy of the series is that Slytherin House was evicted during the Battle of Hogwarts.
They were not given a choice in the matter.
I am sure there are those in Slytherin House who would have left, they chose the better backed side.
But, I am also sure that there are those who would have stayed to fight for Harry.
I would have.
He was almost in my House.