Depression

May is Mental Health Awareness Month and I’m battling depression right now, so here we go. 

Depression makes it hard to think, speak, write, breathe. Depression makes it hard to be.

Depression robs your joy and makes it inaccessible. You can go out with friends and do pleasant things and still feel so empty inside you wonder how no one else can hear the howl of the abyss.

Depression saps your motivation. It makes every task seem insurmountable and nothing worthwhile.

Depression can become so familiar, it feels like the only constant in your life. Depression can whisper to you that it’s the real, authentic you and a medicated version that could access happiness would be the true fake.

Depression muddles your memory and makes it hard to remember happy times, and even harder to remember how happiness felt.

Depression is a disability. Even with therapy and medication and a strong support network, it can knock you flat on your ass. You will need support. You will not accommodation.

Depression is not the opposite of optimism, but it can make hope impossible to hold onto.

And yet, we prevail. We go on. We fight to live another day. I don’t know how or why or what makes so many of us with depression choose to keep going when it is so hard and often so hopeless. I do know that I’m glad of my choice and I want to keep making it.