Feeling Tired Lately – Could It Be Depression?

Well, if you’ve read my “About” page then you know I’ve been dealing with anxiety and depression for about two years now. If you haven’t…well…now you know. Surprise, I suffer from anxiety and depression! Aren’t you excited? On a serious note, you should also know that I have been doing A LOT better since being diagnosed with anxiety and depression two years ago. I also mention this on my “About” page.

Now, when I say that I’ve been doing better I don’t mean that everything has been perfect for me in terms of my anxiety and depression. In my opinion, one can never totally rid themselves of any mental disorder. What I am trying to get across when I say that I am doing a lot better is that I’ve been able to keep my anxiety and depression “tied up” in a sense. Yes, they are there. But I am able to go about my daily life without them getting in the way. And even better, for the past six months I have actually been able to enjoy living life.

So, what exactly is today’s post about? And what the hell is with the title, “Feeling Tired Lately – Could It Be Depression?”? First of all, I’ll apologize for the two question marks which precede this very sentence because it does look damn strange even though I’m pretty sure it is grammatically correct. Okay, now that I got that out of the way I can start to do a little explaining. The reason why I was compelled to right this post up is because I have been feeling overly tired and unmotivated lately. Today has been the worst in terms of being tired and unmotivated. And being the extremely introspective person that I am, I’ve begun to not only notice this trend of mood but have also begun to analyze it. One of the first questions that popped into my mind today after noticing how ridiculously sluggish I’ve been (especially today) was, “Am I coming down with depression?”. I’ll admit I didn’t question my mood in that exact fashion. Depression is obviously not as simple as a cold and isn’t something that you “catch”. However, this is basically what I’ve thought about today. I’ve genuinely wondered if my depression might be worsening to the point of being a “hazard” in my life.

You see, I haven’t really felt the worst of my depression in quite some time now. It’s been at least a good 9-12 months since I’ve been paralyzed by the extremely depressing thoughts onset by depression. Fortunately, I haven’t had days where I lock myself in my room and repeatedly think to myself, “I’m worthless”…”I won’t amount to shit”…”I don’t do anything and I don’t want to do anything”, for a VERY long time. And as I think about this right now I am truly thankful for this. For anyone who suffers from depression you know just how crippling it can be and how much it take the enjoyment out of life. For me, life just wasn’t life when I was deep under the throes of depression.

With that said, two symptoms that I experienced back when depression was a real problem for me were tiredness and a lack of motivation. And this is exactly what I’ve been experiencing lately, especially today as I’ve mentioned before. Even as I’m typing I have this overwhelming feeling of clouded thought. I feel as though there is something weighing me down mentally and it is way too hard to think straight.

The worst part about it all is that I couldn’t even pin point what the cause of this “depression” is if I wanted to. It could be the increase in my marijuana usage. It could be because I am no longer in school and am experiencing my summer break. It could be because of the recent passing of my Grandmother. It could be because I have recently met a huge obstacle in terms of my income. I could go on and on. Do you see what I mean? It could be because of any of these reasons!

Want to know what I think though? I think it is because all of these reasons. And this is something that occurred to me as I started laying out all of the factors in my life right now. There really are a ton of different things (as small as some of them might be) which are either worrying me, draining me of energy, having me think about them way too much, evoking feelings of depression, stressing me out, etc..

This is what I love about writing. Writing is such a great way of expressing what you’re really feeling, letting go of negative and draining thoughts, and solving problems. I can honestly say that I have learned something new about myself and my current life situation by writing out this post. I now realize that my feelings of tiredness and my lack of motivation are a result of many different things. I think that when you let many different negative factors in you life paralyze you and leave you feeling hopeless in a sense, you are vulnerable to depression. Now, depression could literally be depression or it could be any other type of “flaw” that is relevant to you. This is why I think I’ve been feeling these symptoms of depression. There are more than a few negative factors in my life right now which has left me feeling rather overwhelmed. It is now time for me to deal with these factors.

What I plan on doing is trying to identify as many negative factors as I can and then deal with the most outstanding ones as soon as possible. Basically, I’ll be trying to work against the cause of these depression symptoms in hopes of driving them away.

So, what was the point of this post? I really couldn’t tell you. Frankly, it was really a way for me to vent. Believe it or not, writing this post helped me out a whole lot and if you actually took the time to read it all (thank you very much if you did) then I hope you could get something out of it.