Read This If It Feels Like Your Depression Is Getting The Best Of You

Around you the sun keeps rising and setting. The traffic keeps pressing through in the most unrelenting way. The clouds rolls by, the holidays happen. Everyone talks about how they can’t believe October is over and winter is almost here. And you smile behind steaming cider as if you’re just excited as them.

But really, if you were being truly honest, you’d admit that nothing has felt different since August. Rather everything feels blurry, muffled. You’ve lost track of the days and the nights because instead of being individual sunrises and sunsets, it’s just another day of you feeling like you’re walking upstream against a raging current. And instead of fighting, instead of it feeling like a challenge, you’re just getting tired.

Too many times you’ve just lain in bed avoiding any and every responsibility. You don’t know when the last time you checked your mail was. It’s probably overflowing with unanswered letters from cable companies (thank god for automatic withdrawal) and catalogs filled with girls who had enough energy to wash their hair that morning. You sit in the tub watching the now lukewarm water draining beneath you and you wish for a second that you’d go down with it into some abyss where there are not problems outside of wondering where the end of the pipe will take you.

The stereotypical depressed person is always in the dark maybe with ugly, forlorn, black, mascara streaks painting her cheeks or maybe with staring with his bloodshot, red eyes from popping vessels while sobbing. And they sit alone, still in the dark, with that unnecessary war paint, contemplating how much better the world would be without them. And even though that’s a stereotype, sometimes that monster comes in rearing it’s nasty head and messes everything up.

As terrible as the extreme depression, the scary feeling of doom that exists, more often than not, it’s a different monster. And it’s a monster that doesn’t exist in the crazy highs or lows and because of that; it isn’t as easy to spot. It hangs out in the corners undetected just waiting until it can latch on and never let go.

Depression sometimes is a feeling of utter desolation, but what about when it isn’t?

It’s seeing all of the crayons laid out in front of you, the entire 120-count Crayola box you always coveted in grade school, every single color you could possibly imagine. It’s seeing them and having the ability to pick any color, but only being able to force yourself back to the same broken grey crayon day after day after day.

It’s watching people promote asinine things like “drinking more tea” and “running for the endorphins” and thinking, “Fine. I’ll give it a fucking shot.” But then your bladder is bursting from your 18th cup of stupid chamomile and your shins are aching from running for hours, but even after heeding all of this naturopathic bullshit you still just want to sit on the kitchen floor and eventually blend into your surroundings, ceasing to be you because being you is getting exhausting.

It’s hearing about how Prozac changed someone’s life and how therapy is their everything, so you keep popping open the little orange bottle and talking about your ex-bestfriend and your fears every Thursday. You do all of the things you’re supposed to do but nothing’s different. It’s researching at 4 AM for any possible answer but still not wanting to smile at jokes on Twitter or text anyone back because you just suck. And if you know it they must know it too.

It’s feeling like the same bland, sad, murky version of yourself day after day and just wondering if this is how the rest of your life will be.

So even though you got up this morning and you felt the like nothing was different, you feel like you’ve accepted that you will never have highs again, you still feel like you’re looking through fogged up glasses, and you’re simply going through the motions, there’s one thing to keep in mind.

You did get up.

And even though your world right now is that broken grey, your vision is clouded, you homesickness has not been relieved, and your choking down more fucking tea to try and “naturally cure yourself”, one day it won’t feel that way. It might not be tomorrow, or next month, but eventually it will be one day. That day your eyes will be clear, your heart won’t be heavy, and you’ll find yourself reaching for an orange or a green while you order a coffee because why not.

You just have to keep getting up.