The inevitable sadness of being.
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The most frustrating thing about being depressed is that it’s not logical. I can tell myself a million reasons not to be, but my body and mind will do what it wants.
Every morning, I’ll chant a mantra:
I’m lucky, I’m grateful, I love my life. I love my partner, I love my dog. I got promoted, I’m getting paid more, my manager is supportive. I love making a coffee and sipping it while looking out the eucalyptus trees out the window. I have friends who love and care about me. I have everything I have ever wanted and could ever want.
I believe every word.
I’m still depressed.
Both can be true.
There’s no rationalizing your depression.
There’s a scene in Euphoria that depicts the ridiculousness of it so well.
Rue is a recovering addict and also has bipolar disorder. She’s so depressed in this episode that she struggles to go to the bathroom to relieve herself. She lays in her bed for hours in agony, unable to get up. All she has to do is go to the bathroom and pee. Then, she could come back to bed all comfy again. But she doesn’t go.
As we were watching this unfold, my partner turns to me, incredulous and a bit frustrated: Why can’t she just get up and go?
My depression comes and goes as she pleases. I don’t know when she plans to visit. And when she does, I’m not sure why.
We once slept in a twin sized bed together for months, in a room I shared with my sister. We’d stay up late and write notes in my diary. Does anyone else out there feel like this?
When I went to college, we skipped classes together and then stayed up late to catch up and study. Sometimes we’d stay in bed for days and binge books from the library. And other times we’d go to Frat row and binge vodka Red-bulls.
It used to be easy to hide her away since she was mine alone to know. It’s become harder now.
My partner is frustrated by her unpredictable nature; how she comes and goes without reason. There are the good times, and then there are the the other times. There is no seeming rhyme or reason. But, he hasn’t given up looking for the patterns.
He works with a lot of data models and predictions, you see. He spends his days detecting and predicting fraudulent transactions out of the hundreds of thousands of valid ones. And like that, he tries to dissect my life to know cause and effect.
Is it the news and the war in Ukraine? Is it the weather? Is it the turnover and dissatisfaction that’s happening at work? Or maybe it was the terrible idea of binging 2 seasons of Euphoria in a week — drug abuse, depression, hopelessness… who wouldn’t be depressed?
He forgets that data science was my first love. It’s not like I haven’t tried understanding it myself.
And just like that, she leaves — packs up and goes without a warning. Her scent still lingers around the house, reminding me that she once was here. But soon, that will be gone, too.
The sun will shine brighter. Music will once again make me dance. I’ll have cravings again — an almond croissant on the way to the park, a walk to the bookstore to find something new, dinner and drinks with friends.
In the good times, I forget that she exists. Our memories together are hazy.
But when she comes back again she’ll be so clear and so real. It will be like she never left. As if we had a picture album of us growing up together.
If you made it this far, I want you to know that I’ll be okay and that I hope you are too. I want you to hug your loved ones a bit closer. Because I know I’m not the only one.