At the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, a runner named Derek Redmond competed in the 400 meter race. Midway through the race, Derek collapsed on the track with an excruciating torn hamstring. After a few moments of writhing in pain, Derek, with steely resolve, got back on his feet and began hopping down the track on one foot, determined to finish the race. As Derek hopped down the track, a man ran past Olympic security guards, onto the track.
It was Derek's father.
He put his arm around Derek, and helped his injured son finish the race that he had trained thousands of hours for, but no longer had the chance to win. As they neared the finish line, Derek's father stayed behind and let his son cross the finish line by himself, and 65,000 people simultaneously erupted in cheers and gave Derek a standing ovation.
As a former competitive swimmer and a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu grappler, I know all too well what it's like to work so incredibly hard to win, only to have victory ripped from your grasp due to a physical injury.
I also know what it's like to fail due to mental illness.
I had my first suicidal thought at about age 7, and since then, my life has been fraught with emotional turmoil, suicidal ideology, and a general feeling of complete inadequacy. Aside from medication, sports was one of the very few things that helped me with all of those issues--especially the inadequacy part, because I have always seemed to learn sports quickly and, for the most part, excel at them. But despite the positive impact that sports had on me mentally and physically, they still couldn't keep depression and anxiety from eventually bleeding back into my thoughts like dark ink.
For years I made excuses about why I quit swimming when I was a teenager. I didn't know they were excuses at the time, but now I see that they were, because years later I found myself making the same lame excuses to my Jiu Jitsu sensei about why I quit coming to training. Now I finally have the strength to admit:
Depression and anxiety made me quit.
At 9 years old, I swam in water so cold at a swim meet that it turned my lips blue. When I dove into it, it sent my respiratory system into shock and I couldn't make my lungs breathe for the first 30 seconds of my race. I forced myself to keep swimming, and I won the race. I've dived off the starting block and hit my face on the bottom of the pool, bloodying my nose inside and out. I made myself keep swimming, and I won. I've dislocated my knee 3 times in Jiu jitsu, and kept training. I've been in matches where I was caught in a choke, and felt my windpipe collapsing to the point where it felt like I was breathing through a coffee straw. I saw everything getting fuzzy and blurry, and I felt my muscles screaming so loudly with oxygen deprivation that I could no longer move some of them--but I refused to tap out, and kept fighting.
I am anything but weak.
Ever since I was born, I was, as my mom has always said, "stubborn as the day is long" and brimming full of determination and fight. But not when depression hits.
It's easy to fight to win and to keep going in life when you have fight left in you--when you can get mad and dig down deep for that last bit of rage inside you to push your body beyond its natural limits, and to achieve your goals. But depression takes every bit of that drive and determination away. It leaves you hollow and alone, no zest for life, no joy, and no light in your eyes. It can completely take away your desire to do the things you once loved, to eat, to get out of bed, to bathe, to work, and in some cases, it can even take away your will to live.
People with depression and anxiety are just like Derek Redmond. We are injured. The only difference is that you cant see our injury. We get up every day, in mental pain, or sometimes feeling completely numb. Sometimes we have to sit and fight back tears for "no reason" while we get dressed for work. Sometimes we lay in bed motionless, numb and trying to find the motivation to even move our bodies. But we all wake up knowing we are going to have to force ourselves to finish a race we know we are going to lose. Only instead of being met with a supportive friend to help us get to our proverbial finish lines and having standing ovations at the ends of our days, we are mostly met with people telling us to "suck it up," "It's all in your head" and also being told that we are lazy, cranky, flaky, and my least favorite: weak. However, contrary to popular belief, people with depression and anxiety are not weak, wimpy little crybabies. We have more strength than you will ever know.
When someone breaks their arm or leg, a cast is put on the limb, and the limb is not used for 4 to 6 weeks, giving that limb time to heal. But people with depression and anxiety have broken minds that dont get to rest. We have to use them every day. Mentally, we are running on broken legs and lifting things with broken arms. We have to use our broken brains to work, to have relationships, to raise children, and we have to, somehow, try to force our broken brains to fix themselves by taking medicines that half the time don't work or have awful side effects. We also have to use them to get costly therapy, that most of us cannot afford, and that is not covered by health care. So we hobble along, doing the best we can, sometimes with every waking moment being an abysmal pit of despair. Sometimes the pain is so great that we have to make up excuses as to why we cant come in to work, because we will get laughed to scorn and most likely fired if we say "I am too depressed/anxious to come to work." But we don't get standing ovations, or even pats on the back for getting through the terrible days. Instead, most of what we hear is somewhere along the lines of "you're not trying hard enough!" or "stop being so negative!" To hear those words when you have depression is like having a red-hot blade shoved in an already gaping wound.
So the next time you are tempted to utter some snide remark to someone with depression, ask yourself: would I have said this to Derek Redmond, as he hobbled across the finish line?
