The standard working document for sad feelings is a romantic comedy: a white women in her mid 30s breaking up with her boyfriend and therefore ordering takeout, having disheveled hair, and living in sweatpants. She can’t stop crying. She doesn’t shower or leave her house. Her quirky best friend tells her it’s gonna be okay through a keyhole. Her plants wilt. But the guy shows up and the sadness board is erased. It goes to zero. Her problem is solved.
I was conditioned to believe that sadness can be cured with silly dances and bike rides and a man that you like. That it had some silver lining, a beginning, a middle, and an end.
My Depression shows up unannounced on sunny days when everything should be fine.
I talk myself out of saying I’m depressed, a lot. I don’t have time to sit with this like they tell me to. “Just invite the feelings in” like it hasn’t already sat squarely in my stomach three weeks ago.
It’s always there but there are things to do.
I talk myself out of quantifying it. I can get up and do the dishes. But it feels like I’m walking through really thick sand. I’m swimming against a current. The wind is never to my back. Everything is so hard.
I don’t tell anyone. It’s a secret. But in a rare act of bravery, I say something out loud.
”I think I’m lowkey depressed?”
“Really? I had no idea! I’m so sorry! Do you need anything?”
Depressed feels heavy-handed but it also feels like a luxury using that word. It’s dwarfed by having no idea how to answer “do you need anything?” I sink into myself, shocked I have any more real estate to collapse into.
No one likes problems that don’t have a fix. Depression has a very short shelf life. It needs a purpose. It needs cause and effect. It needs a solid story arc. I consult what Mercury and the moon are up to. It has to be something else, instead of just me, something I have done, or something I haven’t been able to do. I crave something to externally pin it to.
I’m not sure where I internalized that my depression needs editorial acclaim. I must be interesting, even in my suffering. This needs a good back story with an equally satisfying bow at the end, all of the sad pieces sandwiches between clever quips and self-deprication. My disheveled hair, on trend. My withered plants, ironic. My sweatpants, designer. My mascara smudges, edgy. Even in my darkness, I have to still be worthy.
Saying it out loud is not sexy. I fear it’s too much. It comes with also showing up messy and leaning into the exhaustion. What if I just didn’t get up to do the dishes? What if I took the day off? Would I disintegrate or would I be able to crawl out of the basement of my brain?
I’m too scared to find out. I do all the things asked of me and collapse after bedtime in a withered lump. There is nothing I want to do. So I just kind of do nothing. I know, by habit, it passes eventually. Sometimes it takes days, other times it takes weeks. Sometimes in those time frames, things feel a bit better for a day, only to retreat back to a heavy, dark space. I just kind of slump through the minutiae try not to hate myself for being so sad.
It doesn’t ever feel therapeutic or satisfying. It’s just waiting in this weird Beetlejuice waiting room for it all to pass, hoping this time I finally felt it all, I did the work, I let it in and talked about it. And if I did the work this time, maybe I never have to do it again, until inevitably, it comes back again, creeps into a really solid Tuesday when I’m making toast, spaces get filled with a dullness, so slowly I don’t know I’m in it until I’m already under.
There is hope, I know this.
I know, I have learned, that you can hold two things at once:
You can notice that you are not yourself.
And also.
You can believe that yourself always comes back.