I'm going to start my blog about living with mental illness by talking about the comments we software engineers leave as waypoints for other developers.
Developers write comments for a lot of reasons... self-reminders, anger, jokes. Inexperienced developers often throw them everywhere, idly explaining what their program self evidently does, wasting disk space and time.
But the best engineers comment only rarely, only when the code as written doesn't make sense without elaboration. Sometimes, because of time demands, or performance demands or some terrible mistake someone else made, you have to write confusing code. Code that makes no sense to a normal, well-adjusted programmer. Code that works but shouldn't.
Crazy code.
Good developers write comments around this code. They warn their colleagues things are not as they seem, be careful. With a little exegesis, they help their team to see the method in the madness and avoid falling into traps that could hurt. I've probably had my job saved by one of these comments more than once. And I can definitely say that I've had days ruined by warnings that should have been there, but weren't
My favorite comment ever was written by a development lead at my current job, in the middle of our elaborate, terrifying caching scheme. It begins:
"Welcome to hell kid, I'll be your guide."
The comment is beautiful, part explanation, part apology, part righteous vindication. He admits what he does is strange and difficult to work with. He takes great pains to explain his design, cite his outside sources and make everything easy for you. But, he also boldly defends his decisions. Were he a little less kind, I imagine the commend ending "and if you don't like it... go *** yourself."
I hope you've already caught on to where this story is going.
The life I've lived and actions I've taken because of my depression are much like bad code.
In many ways, they've been very ugly. I've left friends and family members emotionally devastated by the experience of supporting me. Worse in my mind, I've hurt countless strangers - I've cussed out clerks, threatened doctors, and gotten in fights with drunk bros in Lakeview. I even emotionally manipulated you (probably), convincing you to read this pathetic little piece of self-aggrandizement.
At the same time, they've made perfect sense. The terrifying thing about depressed thinking is that it's internally consistent. When I say "I should kill myself, I don't deserve to live," what I say makes total sense... if you are willing to buy into the assumptions about myself and the world that arise from my condition. If you hated yourself the way I hate myself, I promise you, you'd consider suicide. If you, like me, took it as self evident that everyone in the world was lying to you whenever they said something nice, you would be just as anxiety ridden and miserable. Like a our caching program, the madness stems from the conditions of the problem, not the solution.
Finally, I know that depression hurts people. Tens of millions of people suffer something much like what I suffer. Billions are hurt indirectly by friends and loved ones who behave erratically, break down, or make the final logical leap and kill themselves. I can't stop my depresion from hurting other people, but I can, maybe, find a way to help them cope with the hurt depression (mine, theirs, or someone else's) has caused.
This blog is my comment. It's my way of trying to help other people cope with and understand mental illness, and depression in general. It's my way of vindicating what I've done and who I've been, by helping others to see the method in the madness. It's my way of helping others to support those you know with mental illness, since ill-executed good intentions can hurt a mentally ill person as much, or more than active malice.
It's not going to be pretty. It's not going to be happy. I don't get better at the end of the story. There is no ever after. You will be saddened. You will be disgusted. You are almost certainly not going to like me more after reading it, because I've done a damn good job of covering up the awful things depressions made me think and do over the years. That's fine. Depression is ugly, miserable and nasty, and insofar as I am depressed, so am I. But I do hope that after reading, you might understand.
/* Welcome to hell kid
I'll be your guide */
Developers write comments for a lot of reasons... self-reminders, anger, jokes. Inexperienced developers often throw them everywhere, idly explaining what their program self evidently does, wasting disk space and time.
But the best engineers comment only rarely, only when the code as written doesn't make sense without elaboration. Sometimes, because of time demands, or performance demands or some terrible mistake someone else made, you have to write confusing code. Code that makes no sense to a normal, well-adjusted programmer. Code that works but shouldn't.
Crazy code.
Good developers write comments around this code. They warn their colleagues things are not as they seem, be careful. With a little exegesis, they help their team to see the method in the madness and avoid falling into traps that could hurt. I've probably had my job saved by one of these comments more than once. And I can definitely say that I've had days ruined by warnings that should have been there, but weren't
My favorite comment ever was written by a development lead at my current job, in the middle of our elaborate, terrifying caching scheme. It begins:
"Welcome to hell kid, I'll be your guide."
The comment is beautiful, part explanation, part apology, part righteous vindication. He admits what he does is strange and difficult to work with. He takes great pains to explain his design, cite his outside sources and make everything easy for you. But, he also boldly defends his decisions. Were he a little less kind, I imagine the commend ending "and if you don't like it... go *** yourself."
I hope you've already caught on to where this story is going.
The life I've lived and actions I've taken because of my depression are much like bad code.
In many ways, they've been very ugly. I've left friends and family members emotionally devastated by the experience of supporting me. Worse in my mind, I've hurt countless strangers - I've cussed out clerks, threatened doctors, and gotten in fights with drunk bros in Lakeview. I even emotionally manipulated you (probably), convincing you to read this pathetic little piece of self-aggrandizement.
At the same time, they've made perfect sense. The terrifying thing about depressed thinking is that it's internally consistent. When I say "I should kill myself, I don't deserve to live," what I say makes total sense... if you are willing to buy into the assumptions about myself and the world that arise from my condition. If you hated yourself the way I hate myself, I promise you, you'd consider suicide. If you, like me, took it as self evident that everyone in the world was lying to you whenever they said something nice, you would be just as anxiety ridden and miserable. Like a our caching program, the madness stems from the conditions of the problem, not the solution.
Finally, I know that depression hurts people. Tens of millions of people suffer something much like what I suffer. Billions are hurt indirectly by friends and loved ones who behave erratically, break down, or make the final logical leap and kill themselves. I can't stop my depresion from hurting other people, but I can, maybe, find a way to help them cope with the hurt depression (mine, theirs, or someone else's) has caused.
This blog is my comment. It's my way of trying to help other people cope with and understand mental illness, and depression in general. It's my way of vindicating what I've done and who I've been, by helping others to see the method in the madness. It's my way of helping others to support those you know with mental illness, since ill-executed good intentions can hurt a mentally ill person as much, or more than active malice.
It's not going to be pretty. It's not going to be happy. I don't get better at the end of the story. There is no ever after. You will be saddened. You will be disgusted. You are almost certainly not going to like me more after reading it, because I've done a damn good job of covering up the awful things depressions made me think and do over the years. That's fine. Depression is ugly, miserable and nasty, and insofar as I am depressed, so am I. But I do hope that after reading, you might understand.
/* Welcome to hell kid
I'll be your guide */
