My Old Friend, Depression, is Back!
My old friend depression is back for another visit. I say friend, I think that’s more a case of Stockholm Syndrome than anything. I didn’t invite him, he eats all my food, he’s rude, and he smells weird. He comes around a lot, and I don’t really like it when he shows up, but I can’t just kick him out, either. He licked my ear the other day. What do you do in that situation?
It’s incredible how depression can suddenly strike out of nowhere. A week ago I was feeling fine, better than that, everything was going well. Then my computer died and that sucked, but even a couple of days after that I was feeling better. I even wrote about how I took some time off and came to terms with it. But the day after I posted that blog, I woke up and just felt terrible. I don’t want to get into why, but I know the cause.
My coping mechanism has always been to lay in bed and watch YouTube all day. Though these days I add films to the mix. You gotta have some variety in your coping, you know? Funny enough, it’s days like this where I’m glad to go to work, just to take my mind off things. But days where I’m off? They’re not so fun.
If you don’t struggle with depression, it can be difficult to understand just what its like. I was thinking about it, and the best I’ve got is the dumbest hypothetical scenario imaginable. Say you want to lift something heavy, let’s say one of those gigantic bags of rice into your car. You want to pick up the bag of rice, you know you need to because that’s all you can eat for… some reason. Just go with it, okay? But its heavy. Too heavy for you to pick up. It doesn’t matter how badly you need to pick it up. It doesn’t matter how hard you try. It doesn’t matter how much you believe in yourself. It’s too heavy, and its not going anywhere.
That’s depression. I know sitting around feeling sorry for myself doesn’t help. I know watching YouTube and Netflix in bed all day is terrible for my health. I know shunning my friends and family is awful. But I literally cannot help it. Talking about depression always invites the “just get over it!” types, but fuck them.
I don’t mean to worry anyone. I don’t have suicidal thoughts or anything like that. My depression is more the lethargic kind. I don’t want to do anything, just sit there and zone out, more or less. I’ll put on a video or a movie I don’t really care about and turn off my brain. I don’t watch videos or movies I actually want to watch, and I don’t play games or read books I’m actually interested in. I certainly don’t actually get any work done.
The fact that I’m writing this blog right now typically indicates that I’m over the worst of it. But it’s been about a week and I haven’t written anything or worked on my short stories or book. That’s a whole other can of worms. I write these blogs in advance, by the way. Sorry to break the illusion, but I rarely write these the day they’re posted and this one is no exception.
2025 has been an incredibly difficult year for me personally, and also the world. Starting this blog has helped me way more than I thought it would, and it’s taken me a few weeks to realize that. Oh, what a nice bow we can wrap around this incredibly downbeat blog! Feeling sad? Just write! That’s how that works! STOP LICKING MY EAR!
