Am I Really Depressed – Or Just Faking It?

Mental health can be funny sometimes. Your wounds aren't visible to the naked eye, and quite often you get stigmatized just for talking about it. And most of the time, the harshest judgment comes from within.

"You're not really drowning, you're just imagining the water".

Yep, that's the voice I've kept hearing in my head every waking moment. It never stops, even when I'm knee-deep in a depressive episode, battling intrusive thoughts, and being terrified of my own mind and the world around me – still it whispers, "You're just making this up".

That's one of the greatest signature moves of high-functioning depression: when you're still able to go to work, crack jokes, and carry conversations – somehow it convinces you that you're fine. Or worse, that you're just faking it altogether.

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I'm not sure when it started, but people always said my eyes looked sad.  Not empty – just sad. Like eyes that had seen a fire, and I was the only one who made it out, and no one else managed to.

I liked making jokes about how I hated my life. I didn't think I was worthy of anyone, not even my family. Part of me believed they would be better off if I just disappeared. How did I come to that conclusion? I don't know. The thoughts were just...there.

Until someone pointed out that this wasn't normal. The self-deprecating humour, the darkness in my jokes – they were alarming and early warning signs. I can be stubborn sometimes, and this was no different. I brushed it off, laughed it away, and told him they were overreacting.

It was an ugly cry. But the kind you need – the one that breaks you a little so you can start sorting and picking up the pieces.

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I started listening to the silence between what I had to say more. I started noticing the look on people's faces when I said I didn't really enjoy life – they were worried or just uncomfortable. But either way, I needed to do something, and that was when I decided to go to therapy.

The therapy session didn't turn out exactly as it was portrayed on television. They didn't ask those generic yes-or-no questions. Their questions were open-ended, and they paid close attention to your responses and stories. At least that was my experience.

I didn't realize I had been talking for half an hour. My eventual diagnosis was depression – but not the kind that completely takes over your life, the doctor said. It reminded me of the time in third grade when I could barely see the whiteboard from where I sat. Everything felt blurry all of a sudden. I was the only one in the class that had this issue. I thought something was seriously wrong with me – maybe even that I was dying. I was so scared. But I just needed glasses.

This time I needed medication and a bi-weekly hospital visit. And I was learning what healing from depression looked like.

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Session after session, after session, after session, and so on. From bi-weekly appointments to just monthly. I was making progress, I thought. The medicine must have been working. I felt good. Too good. So good that I started to think I might be faking the illness all along. I was able to get out of bed easily. My performance at work was decent. I met deadlines like I was supposed to.

"What are you doing? You should be depressed".

My mind spoke volumes again. Loud and clear.

I had fallen headfirst into one of the cruelest stereotypes in the mental health world – that if you're not struggling all the time, then maybe you never had it in the first place.

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I brought this up to my doctor – the thought that maybe I had been making all this up. It was like I was confessing to a crime I wasn't even sure I committed – but this time the crime was my depression and that I had suffered from it.

"If you were faking it, you wouldn't be here. People who fake it don't go this far through months of treatment, or even ask these kinds of questions".

"You're not faking it – you're healing. That is what this part looks like".

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It's normal to doubt yourself when your pain is not visible, and I'm still learning that healing from depression is not a straight line. Some days I feel fine, some days I might snap over the smallest things that don't really matter. And even on the best days, I might find myself second-guessing if I ever have this illness or just fake it to get attention again.

Now I've stopped measuring my depression by how loud it screams. Sometimes, it's the silence that does the talking. And maybe that’s what living with mental illness really means — not shutting down the voice in your head, but learning how to talk back.

Most things require time, and recovery is certainly no exception.

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