Somewhere we put a face to depression, but it’s the wrong one. We’ve decided that depression is a sad, middle-aged man with a beer gut who lives alone and spends his time in a dark, dank basement playing video games. Or it’s a lonely woman stuffing her face with Cheetos while watching TV and crying in her bedroom. We assume these things because we don’t really know. But the truth is that’s not what depression looks like.
Depression isn’t always sleeping until you die, or wishing you could. What is depression? Sometimes it’s not being able to sleep at all. Sometimes you stay awake and stare at the ceiling, exhausted but unable to close your eyes.
It’s feeling guilty for something you didn’t do. Feeling guilty for no real reason. Then feeling unworthy because you feel guilty. Feeling unworthy for everything, sometimes even for your own life. And then feeling guilty about that, too.
It’s feeling ravenous and needing to eat everything in sight and yet still you lose weight. It is also not eating because the thought of food makes you sick and yet you gain weight. It’s being a vegetable and not having an ounce of energy to move—and feeling guilty about it—but it’s also exercising too much. It’s putting excessive strain on the body just for that relief. For the rush of endorphins that temporarily makes you feel good. It’s over-training in search of the temporary distraction from the numbness. For the pain of pushing through that finally makes you feel something.
What Is Depression?
Sometimes it is sadness, but sometimes it’s just a low mood. It’s not always the bright, sunny disposition that everyone else seems to so easily conjure. Sometimes it’s no mood at all. Sometimes depression is numbness and feeling nothing: a sensation best described as meh.
It’s the strange urge for self-harm just so you can feel. It’s the urge to check out with drinking and drugs just so you can’t feel. So you can escape the intense, unrelenting pain. It’s sometimes all of those and none of those.
It’s standing in line at the take-out and not being able to decide on ketchup or no ketchup. Sometimes the words on the menu don’t register and you can’t think of what you’re supposed to do now. It’s the difficulty of making words make sense. Of processing information.
It’s the shopping obsession because the shoppers’ high finally makes you feel. It’s also avoiding basic shopping like the grocery store because people are overwhelming.
What Else Is Depression?
It’s another health condition, like thyroid disease or autoimmune disease or a vitamin deficiency, camouflaged as depression. (1) It is a horrible reality wrapped in a tremoring bow of anxiety.
It’s a fog that takes over the mind. One that feels more like a thick, wet blanket over your face. You’re pinned down, and you can’t breathe. It’s hard to speak the truth of what’s really happening. You’re under there, but there doesn’t seem to be a way out. If you don’t get it off, it feels like you might just disappear.
Sometimes feeling depressed shows up when you lose your job. But depression is more than just feeling sad. It’s sadness and displeasure that never goes away and then brings its friends: unworthiness and self-loathing.
Sometimes depression isn’t even you. Sometimes it’s your best friend who tells you everything is fine, but she keeps postponing dinner out because she doesn’t want to pretend she’s fine when she isn’t and doesn’t know how to tell you.
It’s the mom in sweat pants with black-rimmed eyes who struggles to arrive at school drop-off on time because her brain isn’t functioning at high speeds. It’s also the mom with perfect makeup and a power suit who smiles and is polite but declines every invitation for a play date citing busy-ness.
What depression is not – is your fault.
You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not a chemical imbalance in your neurotransmitters like they’ve told us, and it’s much more complicated than that. (2) It’s not your fault and it’s not your job to explain it to anyone. All you need to do is find one more cell of strength to keep getting help.
What is depression? It’s everywhere and it could be your closest friend.
