Depression isn’t a fun topic; in fact, admitting to depression is the best way to become a social pariah. If you don’t have depression, you don’t know what it’s like to have this soul-sucking darkness consume you (and I am, frankly, a little jealous of that). It’s hard to explain to someone what it feels like. My dad said it is like being lower than whale shit…which, if you think about it, is pretty low. He also called depression a “mean fucker.” It’s true. It is. Just kind of weird to hear my father use the f-word.  🙂

I’ve reached that point where I just don’t care anymore. Too depressed to keep living as I am. Too apathetic to change. Not suicidal, just ambivalent about being alive. I would love to find a nice deserted island or maybe just melt away like a snowman during the spring thaw.

But here I am. Day 21 at home, in bed, legs unshaven, eyebrows (and if we’re getting into the gory details) girl ‘stache unplucked, body funk offensive even to my dog, with probably close to 100 empty Coke cans sprinkled around my bedroom – now being stacked because I’ve run out of flat surfaces – wondering how and why I got to this point. I’m all out of Cheetos, Haribo gummi bears and money and I only have four cans of Coke left. (The horror!)

Depression is more than a state of feeling blue. It’s feeling like you have your own personal raincloud that never leaves…and you’re fresh out of $0.99 Wal-Mart rain ponchos. It’s been described as anger without enthusiasm. It’s more than that really though. It’s life without enthusiasm. It’s being physically present but emotionally checked out. It’s like your favorite purple pen that just ran out of ink. On the outside, it looks like any other pen. On the inside, it’s devoid of any color. And when you try to use it, it makes that screech across the paper like fingernails on a chalkboard. Yes, I just compared my mental state to fingernails on a chalkboard.

So why am I writing about depression? Because someone needs to, and not from the clinical or pharmaceutical perspective. Maybe I can write the gray away. I don’t have a miracle cure or a magic pill, but I am trying to see the upside of being down.

Sidebar: I’d thought about using that as my blog name but apparently there are a couple of books out there already so entitled (one about the decline of civilization and the other about succeeding through failure.) There is also a book about the downside of up, which apparently is a banned book because it talks about…egads…male puberty and ill-timed erections.

So here I am. Back at day 21, surrounded by reminders of my depression. Crap everywhere that I just can’t be bothered to deal with, stacks of (clean) laundry waiting to be folded and put away, boxes of recycling needing to be recycled, empty pill bottles litter the floor (all prescription drugs used according to direction), I even have a box of curry paste on my nightstand…because I was going to make curry and wanted to check out Pinterest for recipes, but never actually got that far. And of course, sundry examples of my unsuccessful attempts at crawling out of this hole.

I’ve tried gratitude journals, EMDR, CBT, talk therapy, church, “snapping out of it,” exercise, anti-depressants, sugar, chocolate, protein, hugging my dog, sleeping all day, insomnia (okay, I didn’t try insomnia, it jut happened but it also was not helpful), watching funny shit on Netflix, listening to all kinds of music, walking in the rain, sitting in the sun, cleaning, making lists, reading, faking it until making it, ugly crying, isolation, socialization, bathing, not bathing, getting dressed, remaining in my super sexy sweatpants, vitamins, happiness projects, coloring (oddly soothing)…and it all comes down to this. Depression is a mean fucker.

My new tactic is to find the upside of being down. Like when I was ugly crying into my pillow and I accidentally inhaled a dog hair and started choking. Then I started laughing because a) ew-dog hair on my pillow, b) really ew-dog hair in my mouth, and c) inhalation of dog hair from uncontrollable sobbing and subsequent choking is mildly humorous. I can’t even cry right. That’s funny!