Life is a Rollercoaster....?

So the brain buzzes are starting to become less of an issue, and I feel less like I'm constantly suffering from head rushes, and so I wanted to talk about another couple of things that link to depression.

Firstly, if you've ever known anyone with any mental illness, you will understand what I mean by life is a rollercoaster for us. Some days I feel totally fine (like today), then the next day, for no real reason, all of those anxieties and fears creep back in and I doubt myself and doubt myself work. Sometimes the trigger is the smallest thing, like someone forgetting to include you in an email, or that niggling feeling that someone is avoiding catching your eye (when actually they're not at all) and sometimes there is no trigger, which makes you feel as though you are broken and useless - why else would you feel so sad and overwhelmed when there is no reason for it? Then the next day you could feel worse, you could feel better and it's all so bloody frustrating. To make matters worse, when the depression is kicking, I find that I can't distinguish between situations that are really rubbish and situations that only seem rubbish because I'm feeling down.

I've often described being depressed as feeling as though everything is swirly, like you're looking on the world through some weird glasses that make everything feel a little bit distant and a little bit unreal and this includes emotions so being depressed is something of a Catch 22 because once you start to feel down, things are more likely to make you feel down and you get pulled further and further into the swirly reality that makes everything seem so confused and 'wrong'. I guess this is where I'm coming from with my continued insistence that a depressed person doesn't need to be treated as though they are fragile, but rather that they have some worth. BUT the truly terrible thing is that *sometimes* even if you try to help a depressed person that they are great, that bit in the back of their brain will be telling them "they're just patronising you, they don't really mean it, they're just saying it". It's not that I don't trust your opinion, it's that the praise has to actually mean something; it as to be for something and not just praise for the sake of praise.

Dear God, I'm demanding aren't I? My brain doesn't work properly so I want you to work hard to convince me that I am useful to you!!!

Moving on.....I am a member of Mensa, maybe I'm a little bit too proud of this, but in some ways, to me, it's something that my depression can't take away from, something I can always be proud of even in my deepest despair. You see, being smart is something I've always been. I completely and utterly lack common sense, but I can solve complex problems....it's like a giant scale where someone has said "you there, you shall be smart, but to balance this we will make you useless at walking down the street without bumping into things". There has been a debate raging for quite some time on one of the Mensa forums (on LinkedIn), asking whether people felt that being hyper intelligent can make you prone to depression. I often find that I feel as though I'm thinking too hard about situations, I feel that compared to other people I am constantly overthinking, but my question is, is this because I'm smart, or is this because I am depressive and therefore my brain works differently? At the risk of seeming arrogant, I do tend to see the big picture much more clearly than other people and I sometimes find it hard to comprehend that other people can't just make the links that I do, and sometimes I am convinced I make links that aren't there, particularly when I'm already spiralling down. My boyfriend finds it fascinating that I often know ahead of times about something that is meant to be a secret because my brain has already worked it out and made the connections, but I don't always get it right. So is it a blessing or is it a curse? Am I depressed BECAUSE of this clarity or are the two things completely separate? Is this the clarity all in my head and a symptom of the depression?

As I type this, I find myself thinking that everyone who reads it will probably think less of me, but I want to make sure that people understand some of what goes through my mind, which will, perhaps, help them to understand a friend or a loved one who may be going through something similar. The negative side of me worries constantly that everything I type in this blog will make people dislike me despite knowing that my friends are my friends for a reason, but in particular when I write something like this, something that could make me look arrogant or abrasive or just a bit of a dick.