Waking up with depression isn’t easy.
Waking up with depression is hard. You hear the loud beep of your cell phone alarm pound through your ears, much louder than you remember from the night before. You check your alarm, think to yourself, “Ten more minutes of sleep wouldn’t hurt.” Then doze off for your last few minutes of freedom before a new day. It seems like the little bit of peace you get at night – those few hours where you can actually sleep – are getting shorter and shorter. You’d give anything to just sleep your day away.
But no. Life has a different plan for you today. You get up, with maybe twenty minutes left before you have to be in class. You think of what you can skip in your morning routine and choose not to shower once again, even though you probably should.
Sometimes brushing your teeth gets pushed away, too. You throw on the same sweatpants you wore yesterday and pull out a comfortable sweater that doesn’t stink too badly. You run a brush through your hair quickly. Sometimes, if you feel like hiding the pain you’ll put on a little makeup so you feel pretty. But today isn’t one of those days. You grab your things and run out the door, with just a little over ten minutes left until class.
In class, you don’t say anything. You go through the motions, typing up notes and trying your hardest to focus. It’s hard but you’re here, which is an achievement in itself. Some days your depression is so bad you physically cannot get out of bed so class isn’t an option. Thankfully, today wasn’t one of those days. You gained the strength to make it to the classroom but while you’re there your mind isn’t quiet. This is the reason why you just choose to stay home so often.
After class is over, lunch rolls around. As always, you don’t have an appetite. Food used to be something you loved but now it’s just another requirement. You eat because you have to, but somedays you barely do that. You grab the first thing that sounds somewhat appealing and eat it – meals are no longer enjoyable.
In between the requirements of your day-to-day, you think of all the extra things you have to do. Work, organizations, volunteering…all of the things that you love during the good days, that give you some extra sense of purpose…but that also add so much more to worry about.
You’ll spend your bad days wishing you didn’t have to deal with these things because they don’t add any joy. They just make things worse because they give you more to spend your time anxiously stressing over or they force you out of the comfort of your bed. Wouldn’t life be easier if you just got to do as you please?
When your day is done, you return to the comfort of your room. You change out of your sweats into your favorite fuzzy pajamas and you are at peace. Finally, you have the chance to recharge a bit, to restart a bit, to feel a bit better. The dark days of your depression aren’t easy. They’re so exhausting, so time-consuming, make you wonder if you’ll ever be okay again.
And you will be okay again. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But the dark days of your depression don’t last forever.
Remember that.
By Sarah Lane for TheOdyssey