Depression Isn’t Fair.

It helps to know you’re not alone.

Photo by Unsplash

“Depression takes all my vibrant colors and bashes them together until I am gray, gray, gray...Perhaps this is why so many depressed people become artists, to reclaim the power of answering the question: what is the point? We are clawing at the ground with pen and paper while drowning in quicksand.” Glennon Doyle, Untamed.

“What’s the point?” That’s my prevailing thought on this bright sunny day in Southern California. I want the sky to match what I feel inside. Instead, I wrestle with the profound incongruity between what is external and what is internal.

The sun is mocking me.

I fear writing that question, What’s the point? It is something I ask more often than I want to admit for the flood of insufficient answers that come back at me. The point is...!

These words don’t just come back at me, they are yelled at me, the point is…!!! The answers try to pull me out of the hole.

But this is not an intellectual exercise of trying to answer that question. It is an experiential questioning with existential-crisis undertones.

Right now, I am dressed to get good things, like a dose of Vitamin D at my nearby beach. Yet I am overwhelmed by the extraordinary effort required of me to put one foot in front of the other to get to something that I imagine will be life-giving.

It takes so much effort to turn away from things that will end up healing shame onto the darkness, things like french fries that so fleetingly numb but don’t bring any light to the dark spaces.

And then my mind plays tricks on me. 

I imagine all the people I know who aren’t depressed, who wake up to another beautiful day on a holiday weekend and declare, “Yes! I am alive and ready to move into good things.”

I want to declare that. I want to feel that. I want to feel that after I eat my oatmeal with carefully curated toppings and turn off the news before it crushes me, and put on clothes that indicate I am planning to go outside.

There are moments when I do feel the goodness of being awake and alive.

This isn’t one of them.

My prevailing experience in my body is to fold into a ball in the corner of a room and let Netflix wash over me until the feelings have passed.

But they are not passing. It has been a few days now and I move my feet like they are encased in cement shoes, trying to bypass the emotional heaviness and let my brain direct my steps.

Eat this for energy. Avoid the drive-thru because your body will rebel. Fold the laundry, order is helpful. Write some words, even if nothing is shared publicly. Avoid Instagram so you don’t hate yourself and other people.

My brain is sending these signals like a lighthouse on a stormy day and I am out in turbulent waves, fighting to get to shore, dreaming of calmer waters.

But the flash storm seems to be only over my boat. I look across and others are enjoying placid seas.

Like a petulant child, I stomp my feet and say in my best Veruca Salt voice, “I want a calm and content inner world and I want it NOOOWWW!”

And then I imagine I am not alone. As I listen to NPR stories about the rising levels of depression I realize others are in this fight as well. I think of my students, the college demographic, with high numbers in these areas.

I wonder, how do we take comfort in the awareness that others feel like we do? What compassion might I offer a fellow human stuck in a dark space? Can I extend that compassion to myself?

I’m not sure.

One balm does help. Writing.

Writing this down gets it out of my body. Rereading coherent sentences gives structure to what feels chaotic. Relieves the pressure.

I am not carrying it all in my bones. I’ll let the words on the page hold some of the weight I carried in my chest.

And now, a bit of the cement has chipped off my feet and they are not as heavy to lift.

Some of the water has started to calm and my pitching boat is rocking a little more gently.

The sunshine is a bit more inviting than mocking.

There is a little reprieve.