Content Warning for a long, metaphor-rich discussion of my experience of depression.

I spent my day doing things I didn’t want to do. I got out of bed more or less on time. I worked out. I showered and got ready for work quickly. I worked from home briefly, before a therapy appointment, and spent my morning break washing dishes and taking out the trash. I discussed uncomfortable topics about how heavy my heart sits in my chest, how tattered my soul feels as I do my best to direct my path through life, and how the silences I feel in the course of my day ring more loudly in my ears than my ever-present tinnitus. I drove to work with the windows up as a fog of smoke from fires in Canada rendered the air hostile. I walked around the interior of my workplace a dozen times after lunch since it was safer than going outside. I slowly worked through some test cases for a project and didn’t argue with my more experienced coworker when I knew he was wrong, choosing to let the system handle it rather than spend five to ten times more of my day arguing than it would take to just write up the issue that wasn’t an issue. I talked through presentation ideas with my two coworkers for a week when they will be gone while it is our turn to present at a role-based meeting within the company that none of us think is worth our time. I began to prepare a presentation for that meeting and reached out to someone who has always been cold and dismissive to me because I refused to fall in line with everyone else and I don’t have enough seniority for her to gladhand.

At the end of all that, I am writing this blog. Once this is done, I will make myself some dinner from leftovers or meal-prep I did on Friday and then go stream some Ghost of Tsushima. After that, I’m going to set up a second TV, try to come up with ideas for where to put art on my walls, read for a little bit, and then go to bed. I think all of those things are stuff I want to do. Normally, I enjoy dinner, streaming, doing little tasks around my apartment, and reading. I’ve even begun to enjoy going to bed again, now that the stress and frustration I felt in my old apartment is gone, blasted away by painted walls and the lack of noisy neighbors. Today, though, all I can think and feel about these things is that they are on my to-do list. Today, partly in thanks to the emotional drain of a strong therapy session followed by a very full and draining day, I am out of the ability to feel any particular way about things. Instead, I just do them because they are a part of my plan and, like brushing my teeth or flossing, I know it is important for me to do these things even if I can’t currently form an opinion about them one way or another.

Today, my depression has lain a sheet of gauze over my life. I can still mostly see all the parts and I know everything is still there underneath the sheer fabric, but it has lost all definition. All of the brilliance and color and specificity of it has faded away in the face of this smothering cover. It might sound worrisome, but this sensation is as familiar to me as my sense of self. This has been happening my entire life, as my depression has risen and fallen, has waxed and waned. It is unpleasant, but only in the abstract. It is difficult to find something this familiar unpleasant, especially when it is more of a lack than a thing itself. I know how to handle it, after all, so it lacks any sense of urgency. There is no crisis here, no problem to solve. I just have to wait it out. The same wind that blew it in will blow it out as well and while it might knock some things over as it leaves, no amount of effort on my part will help it along. If anything, me struggling against it will just entangle it further, keeping it around longer and increasing the damage it does when it finally leaves.

Last friday’s post, about the plight of the modern artist, is part of the reason this particular blanket blew in. It is difficult, after all, to care about things when I find myself confronted with only indifference or absence. It is difficult to care about things when the place I spend forty-eight hours of every week is being slowly shaken apart by tiny, meaningless power struggles. It is almost impossible to care when I can’t seem to find anything to care about that doesn’t wind up taking a bite out of me as thanks for my efforts. I am tired of people being short-sighted, narrow-minded, self-obsessed, and willing to burn it all down just so they can get theirs. I am tired of being dragged into useless meetings so somone can feel powerful. I am tired of extending an hand and reaching across the chasm only to get yanked into it when the person I’m trying to reach demands even more. I am tired of trying to convince people that they should also care. It is exhausting and, after the past eight months I’ve had, more than I can bear.

Eventually, though, this will pass. The guaze will blow free and I will clean up the mess it left behind. I will find things that stir me deeply, people who are worth all I care to give and more, and someone who will not just reach back across the gap between us, but maybe even help stablize me so I won’t fall in other places. This is a cycle of being. An awful one, to be sure, but one I have lived all my life. It is the rise and fall of depression, taking my mood and emotional capacity with it. These days, it takes days or weeks. Even just a few years ago, in 2019 and earlier, it took months. Even beneath the weight of this, I can still recognize and admire the changes I’ve made through hard work and growth in the past decade. It still feels as horrible as it ever did, but it is no longer an endurance run. Now, it’s a jog. Maybe even a walk. It is slow and heavy and it feels like it will never end, but I expect it’ll turn around in a day or two. After all, today was not the start of this. Last week was. Today is just the worst of it. It’s not like this is a bell curve. There’s no data to plot, no rate of change to measure. I just know. I can feel the first tickles of the breeze that will blow the smothering sheet of depression away from my life even if I feel like I might begin to suffocate any moment now.

This is no comfort to me, unfortunately. I am beyond comfort right now. All I have is ways to fill my time until this passes and that’s why I’ve got my to-do list. There’s no need to find ways to keep busy. I already did that. I wrote it all down and each item marked off is one deep breath passing through the guaze, reminding me that it cannot smother me. I might also be a featureless object beneath it, just like all my emotions, thoughts, and dreams, but it cannot stop me from continuing to exist. It has no power here, only oppressive weight. I am the one with the power and days like this are when I put to use the lesson that sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is nothing. So now I will go eat, I will stream a little bit, I will do a couple small chores, and then I will go to bed. Tomorrow is another day and, while it offers no guarrantees, it is another chance that the wind will pick up and blow this fog away.