Saying that I suffered from depression is as hard to say as it is to type. I don’t like it. It doesn’t resonate, and I don’t accept it. But that doesn’t make it untrue.
When people suggested I might be depressed, I suspected there was some truth to it, but for me, it was harder to see. My depression was intertwined with my anxiety, and I couldn’t tell the two apart. They also liked to instigate each other.
I thought it was normal to understand what it feels like to want to die.
I thought everyone had considered ending their life at one point or another.
I thought everyone was just getting through their days, but they were just doing it better than me or lying to me.
The idea that people wanted to get up and experience a day, an event, or just life in general seemed like a platitude of sorts. Like something you’re supposed to say, and everyone just goes along with.
We see life through the lens of our own perspective, and unfortunately for some, that lens can get skewed. Because I couldn’t imagine an existence where I would want to act in the ways I saw others acting, I couldn’t see that they were genuinely having a different experience than I was.
Nothing would make me angrier than hearing someone call someone who had ended their life selfish. How cruel. How self-righteous. How could they not see that their pain was bigger than everything?
Because they have never felt that kind of pain.
The person who ended their life couldn’t believe anyone actually cared because we are all just pretending, right? And so what if someone did care? What did someone caring ever help?
If for nothing else, I will thank my depression for teaching me this. Empathy for those battling themselves. Fighting a fight they don’t even realize they are in and might be able to win.
If. They. Just. Keep. Going.
Easy words. Monumental ask.
My depression was sneaky. It came and went, but every day, there was a lingering sense of just getting through the day. Just waiting to go to bed. Each day took effort. That effort sometimes looked like smiling and laughing, so everyone else felt comfortable. Or posting happy photos and videos to prove I was happy and thriving too. That’s what we do, isn’t it? We try to conform, to fit in. No one likes someone who admits life isn’t fun and feels like an obligation.
Yet I kept trying. The fact that I wanted to keep trying was enough for me to keep trying. It might be more meaningful and tug at heartstrings if I said it was my family or some noble cause that kept me going, but that would be a lie.
I couldn’t accept that I mattered to anyone enough that my absence would feel worse than my presence.
On the other side of depression, I have found the ability to accept love. To accept that my absence would hurt those I love and not relieve them. My heart breaks at the idea of leaving them. At the idea of my husband not having me to call each time he changes location or can’t decide which snack to buy. Or my daughter needing her mother, but there’s no mother there. I can’t believe I thought leaving my people would be a good thing. But I did.
I feel like if I had read this while I was depressed, I probably would have rolled my eyes. Hope was not something I knew how to feel. Happiness was an illusion.
But if you read this and you can relate, your stuff may be different than mine was, but it is no less real. Your feelings are real, and in this moment, they feel true. But our minds can be liars. The mind tries to work for us, and somewhere along the way, it got the message that these thoughts and feelings are what are most beneficial to us.
You can smile again. A real smile. Not the fake kind that makes others comfortable.
You can laugh again. Real laughs.
You can find joy in the mundane.
You can love and be loved.
You can cry and not feel consumed by it.
Written 8.27.25
