My mother says it’s something she felt for a week, then went for a walk and never felt again. I tried to tell her about this awful pit my body seems to crave returning to, like a sick homeostasis. A numb, painful emptiness that I know I’ll come back to, and am currently in again. So, what is that? I know I could find other explanations, other reasons that aren’t that. Like the fact that I only slept four hours last night, or that it was raining this morning. Although my olfactory senses quite enjoy it, without the sun in the morning, I don’t feel any need to get out of bed. So I didn’t. I stayed there until about thirty minutes ago, when I rose to write this. Now, I’m having a coffee I made a touch too strong (if you knew me, you’d know how contradictory that is, considering how blatantly and annoyingly I proclaim my love for coffee with a bite). But maybe today, I’m just too melancholy to take any extra bitterness.
Is depression that incessant ache and emptiness? Or can those symptoms, along with all the others; be explained environmentally? Does the true stickiness and realness of depression lie in when the person experiencing what should be a fleeting emotion, believes they deserve it? When their self-worth is so low that sinking into that depressive state feels oddly right and therefore perpetuates itself? I’ve taken such a passive role in my own depression. Doing what I can when I can, but when the deepest pits of it reach up to drag me down, I relent. I let it pull me under and cradle me in its depths, until it too grows tired of me and lets me float back up — just so I don’t forget how good it can be, so the depths don’t lose their bite when I inevitably return.