Apparently it's blue monday today. I'm well aware it's a made up day that some marketing exec dreamed up. But it's rubbed me up the wrong way and i want to get this out. This is the day of the year that someone has decided is the most depressing day. I've seen lots of flippant adverts encouraging people to spend online on blue monday on things to cheer themselves up, as though it's the new black Friday.
I used to think depression was just feeling a bit sad now and again. Now i am living with it and I know only too well depression doesn't go away after blue monday becomes Tuesday. Depression isn't cured by buying stuff you don't need. Although, you might try buying stuff to try and fill up the chasm inside you that feels a lot like constant despair. You might not eat enough, or you might eat far more than you need, to try and physically fill that yawning void where the vibrant, happy, positive part of yourself used to be. Because you know that part has gone away but you don't know where its gone or how to get it back. Occasionally you laugh and feel happy and you marvel at yourself that you can still do it as most of the time it's like you've forgotten how. If you try and grasp that feeling it disappears like smoke, leaving you alone with your thoughts again.
Depression to me feels like you're on the other side of a piece of thick glass. You can see everyone else, they can see you but try as you might you can't make yourself heard.Or you're treading water in a deep ocean and the sharks are circling beneath you. Or you're on the far side of a wide valley and nobody even knows you're there. You can't remember how to get to the other side to join everyone else, and they cant help you even if they wanted to. Only you can find the tools you need and build a bridge to get back across, if you can scrape enough motivation and energy together to do so. But sometimes it's as much as you can do to get out of bed, dressed and washed.
This is my whole life, not just one dreary monday in January.