The most depressed person in the room is the
one who appears the happiest and the kindest. It’s the person who watches you
closely and notices when you aren’t acting the way you usually are. It’s the
person who pulls you aside and asks if you want to talk about it. Knowing
depression makes you want to be the light in other people’s lives even when you
can’t figure out how to light it in your own life.
The
thing about depression is, it’s not like something that consumes your life
every day. It comes and goes. I can describe it only as a dark cloud that
lingers. On your best day, it’s the tap on your shoulder reminding its close
by. On your worst day it takes your hand and pulls you even deeper into this
darkness you can’t explain to people. On those days, you don’t look like
yourself. You don’t sound like yourself. The version of you on a depressing day
is the version that scares you as well as everyone.
I feel nothing. I feel numb. I wake up and I
want to go back to sleep. I wake up and there’s nothing in my day I’m looking
forward to. I am not hungry even when I can’t remember the last time I ate. I
don’t want to do anything every day, all day, I don’t want to shower. I just
want to lay there. When the night comes, tears well up behind those
eyes because even finding the words to try and describe what a bad day might
look like doesn’t do justice to how I feel and the horrible places I take
myself to. Then I’m overcome with guilt because of all the people I’ve hurt
around me.
But more than anything depression is
fighting back against every force that is trying really hard to take you down.
