I am depressed.
Today was a little bit different. I made the bed. I took out the trash and recycling. I straightened up the living room, and even put some dirty clothes in the dirty clothes bin. Today was a win.
I hear “and?” coming from the studio audience. To most people, this is routine: the everyday habits of responsible people. This is what adults do. Not children, not college students, but the image of the functioning, complete adult. Now, a lot of assumptions and preconceptions feed into that image that might not be entirely accurate, fair, or reasonable, but for the most part, I usually agree. I actually hate clutter. I need to have my things arranged neatly and precisely. I am all about presentation, making things appear just so. I don’t like piles of things lurking in corners or right out in the open. I’ve always sort of been this way. I am not, however, a clutter-nazi. I don’t go to extremes, and I let life happen. But bottom line: my default is not to let things lie.
Depression laughs at my default and kicks it in the balls. The piles of laundry taunt me. The unwashed dishes mock me. The bed berates me. The clutter clamours with noise. Usually all I can do is look at them and sigh and move somewhere where I can’t see them. Out of sight… Most of the time I simply cannot muster the motivation, the energy, or the motion necessary to perform mundane, easy, household chores. To me, the chores don’t seem easy or mundane. They seem monumental. Intractable. Insurmountable. Carving a cave out of a mountain with a pickax and doing the dishes appear to me to take about the same amount of time and effort. Objective reality does not invade this mental assessment. Reality cannot hope to compete with the cold, dark shadow of depressive evaluation.
With this, of course, comes feelings of guilt, inadequacy, failure, and weakness. I know, somewhere in my head, that doing the dishes is not like bashing rocks. I know it to be true. But I can’t make myself act on that information. And so I berate myself. I ridicule. I imagine that those who live with me hate my inability to do the little things. I feel that I am not measuring up. I feel like my life is therefore meaningless and worthless. I feel like a fuck up and an idiot child. The depression doesn’t have to work to get me down because my spirit has already fallen through the floor and is still falling.
But that is a typical day.
Today is a better day. I didn’t wake up with a smile. I didn’t see things in technicolor, birds didn’t sing. But I did pick something up and put it away. I did collect trash. I did walk it outside and toss it in the dumpster. And then I realized that I was actually doing all of those things. I became aware of it. It seemed normal because it was. But it was abnormal because I was able to do it. Normal for me is the once in a while opportunity. I have to come up to get to where most people are most of time. So I look around the apartment and instead of sighing, I feel content. Things look more refined, more like they should. I don’t have to hide from anything, because, as I look around, from all angles things look the same: in their place and quiet. There is nothing to hide from.
So, today is a good day. And I felt that was worth sharing.
If you are wondering what I am on about, check out my previous discussions of depression, what it looks like, and why I might be depressed.
a simple man 