I'd say most of the time I'd depressed, it's mostly just being low energy. I sleep too much, I have trouble getting out of bed. I wake up in the middle of the night and then fall back asleep. I'm tired all day and take lots of little naps. I have no motivation to do much of anything. Work. Hobbies. Video games. Hanging out with people. Even eating, though once food is in front of me I'll do it.
I don't necessarily feel emotionally bad. Like sure I don't feel happy or even good but it's not like I feel sad, really. I just am. Low mood/emotions can coincide with this mild depression though. It's just not the defining feature.
For the most part I can push through this. I can get up (with effort), put on a smile and move on. My work will be slower, it will be worse. I'll be exhausting myself keeping my mask on. But I make it through it. This is the depression that makes me feel the most like an imposter, in a way. I'm wearing a mask of myself as I wait for my face to regrow.
Sometimes, the depression gets more physical. Like a pit in my throat or stomach. Just generally feeling physically bad. Not common, but maybe every few days during an episode. Maybe less. It might not even last much of a day.
The bad moods, the sad moods don't necessarily coincide with these physical feelings but sometimes they do. I feel overwhelmed, like I'm treading water and can barely keep my head above. I feel stressed, but not an ordinary sort of stress. No, a stress about nothing, even when there is something to be stressed about. These moods used to have a lot more self-loathing and guilt. Not so much now. I've cleaned up my life and have developed a healthier sense of self-esteem which has made it hard to get hooked this way. That being said, when the moods come, they will eventually find something to sink their claws into and pull me down. And then I either have to wait for the feelings to subside or hope something, someone knocks me out of them.
I used to have a lot of trouble crying. At the very least it wasn't a common occurrence. Based on this blog, that's clearly changed. Crying helps. Doing things helps. It tends to wash (with time) the bad feelings away for a while.
They are rare, but occasionally I have suicidal thoughts. I've never gotten anywhere beyond passive ideation (and well, maybe fantasizing dying, but never actually making plans) but they're still really scary. Wanting to self-harm is more common (and I think some of my common coping mechanisms, like intensive, reckless cardio when I feel down actually come from that) but I've managed to resist the urge for almost a decade now. In general I think both of these have gone down a lot compared to my early adulthood.
Most people don't know I'm depressed. In fact very few do and even the ones I've told don't realize the extent. I don't blame them at all. I laugh and I smile. I do get happy when I'm with people, generally speaking, so it's not like I'm lying to them in the moment. But that's what they see and so when I say that I'm sad, they don't know what to believe. They don't know I was crying minutes before, that I put the smile on just for them before I opened the door. No one knows.
I want to scream my feelings out. I want to tell everyone that I'm hurting. And yet when push comes to shove, I never do. Or I do but in a way that comes of as incredulous. Because that's how I am.
I don't want to go to institute. I want to stay in my office and mope and think about how much everything hurts and how I'm sad and maybe cry.
I am going to institute because what I want isn't healthy. Being around people is. Participating in life, even if just a bit, that's what I need to do.
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