Depression Is Not The Same As Sadness

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NoxApex(N/A)

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At least, not in my experience with it.
Although at times, I wish it were.
Because at least even sadness is a feeling, an emotional response.
Depression is when something prompts an emotional response, and it doesn't quite compute.
It's when your feelings spit out an error code instead of a proper response.

A man I've known nearly half my life died yesterday morning at 3:48 A.M.
He was a professor of mine, and also by happenstance was the neighbor of my family.
He furthered my education on a trade skill that I kept up with until roughly 2 or 3 years ago.

I saw him only 2 or 3 weeks ago, he stopped and gave me a ride to work while I was walking.
He briefly told me that his retirement plan was to move to Barcelona, Spain.

I have unanswered questions, again, for the second time, and it is the second teacher in that trade that I lost and was left with unanswered questions.


I suppose I'll get closure from the funeral. I'm hoping, at least.
 
I am sorry to hear about your professor and the grieving you experience.
My dad passed away 2 years ago. I was saddened and in a deep depression for a year. I didn't have any desire to do anything, just stared at empty space most of the time. My depression got better when one day I visited his grave and just sat there seeing there are so many other graves there in the cemetery. He is not alone and I was not alone. For every grave, there is a life story. For every life story, there are many people who go through grief like I do. So I realized grieving is a learning process and part of life for everybody. Make no mistake, the sadness still comes in waves every now and then. For two years, I had no energy to clean up his bedroom and things until recently, and when I go through his things, I still feel a tremendous sadness in my heart. I think the pain probably will never go away, I just have to come to term to live with it for the rest of my life.
 
NoxApex(N/A) said:
Depression Is Not The Same As Sadness
I agree with that.

I'm sorry for your losses. Try to get something positive out of them though. The message is do things you want to do now before you no longer can. I was told that many times by older people in my youth. So, I have been doing them.

Many times I have thought to myself I feel good. But, my brain tells me that everything sucks. I just feel like giving up and I have in many ways. I try to stay positive by laughing and smiling. But, then I feel guilty and awkward by doing so. If several good things happen to me I feel like I've done something wrong and I don't deserve them. Then I retreat into isolation and start to feel normal again. I think I should be happy. Things are going well. What's the problem? Then I feel bad about having that problem too.
 
Hey bro. 

I'm so sorry for your loss.  I lost my younger brother a few years ago now to colon cancer.  I learned a lot about the grieving process from losing him.  The most helpful, and obvious in hindsight, thing I learned was that grieving is indeed a process.  Look into the stages.  I went to a "grief group" at my church.  Most churches have them, but there are similar resources in the secular realm as well.  Try and let yourself go through the process.  It get's better.  Like LonelyUser said, I still get waves of missing him out of the blue now and then.  That's ok though, it just means that I cared for him and for me at least, some of those moments turn into little moments that I can celebrate who he was and the time I was blessed to overlap with him.
Don't put any pressure on yourself to feel one way or the other about your friend; just try and stay honest about it with yourself.  You don't have anything to apologize for; indeed, this is just a measure of the depth of your heart.

Prayers bro and my condolences.
 
Thanks everyone who supported my post. I spent the last couple of days helping his sister and his professional assistant clear his house out. I wasn't particularly thrilled about that, it made me slightly emotional but, again, I didn't really have the time to be in my feelings about it because I had to work both days after being there and I try not to go into work with my head all messed up, you know?

The funeral is Tuesday. My boss is going to let me have the day off for it. His sister's not from here, she's traveling to coordinate everything as she was left as the next of kin. She's giving away much of his stuff, in order to minimize the packing and moving to storage, that would've been what he wanted.

The instruments were donated to local schools that he worked for. Carla said I could have pretty much anything of his I wanted. I'm not a particularly material person, but when I was packing his DVDs up I ran across one movie in particular I remember telling him about 15 years ago. I'm surprised he bought it, so I took that as a memory.
 
^ That was nice of you to help out. Very smart to keep small items that trigger happy memories about the person. I've kept several from my past losses and they still help me remember the good things about them.
 

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