Try Smiling

(I know I’m coming in hot with a revelation here: depression blows.)

Try having a mind that constantly seeks to get the rest of your body to destroy itself. 

Try doing everything you can to be happy, only to have every attempt fail—and I mean every attempt: going out and spending time with friends, opting not to go out and instead stay at home alone, dancing, lying on the couch, working, trying to rest, drinking, staying sober, eating so much you gain seventy pounds, eating so little you lose forty pounds, taking medication, upping your therapy sessions, reaching out repeatedly to your support network, giving your support network a break from you, trusting people, trusting no one, talking it out objectively, letting your rage flow unbridled, cleaning, leaving a mess, watching TV, reading a book, listening to music, listening to a podcast, meditating, exercising, staying single, trying to date, writing, not writing for fear of being judged, engaging with social media, deactivating social media, creating boundaries with toxic people, allowing yourself to interact superficially with assholes, forgiving, holding a grudge. It all leads to the same debilitating sense of alienation that you felt, anyway, and it changes nothing. You feel like you could perform any activity on the planet, then its polar opposite, then any other activity within that spectrum—and yet, you still end up at the same place: Hell. It is inescapable. 

You do these things and more because your well-meaning friends (some of whom have experienced depression themselves) have offered you their advice. It seems to have worked so well for them. You want so badly to feel the happiness you can vaguely remember experiencing. So, you try out their advice, and it doesn’t work for you. Ever. How could it? What the fuck does anyone even mean when they say, “You’ve got to learn to love yourself?” It just sounds like utter horse shit. All your brain has ever done is try to hurt you. Now you’ve got to love yourself with that same brain? Okay. Sounds great. You’ll get right on that. Bullshit. You know, truly, that your happiness is broken—possibly beyond repair.

So, you try turning yourself off. That’s what we do when something doesn’t work—turn it off. You no longer perform. You no longer give anyone any part of yourself. You just barely exist. The outspoken you vanishes. The person who vowed to be always, unapologetically, transparently vocal silences herself. Even though you‘ve sworn never to return to that emotional atmosphere you’ve known since you were a child, where silencing and burying your voice only served to protect the most abusive people in your life, you relent. You know it’s too late. You’ve been loud too long. People have already labeled you and shelved you alongside the rest of the crazy, undesirable women. They’ve already stopped listening for a long time. All the meager energy you have left, you invest in robotically performing your base-level, day-to-day functions.

Maybe a few people notice that the white noise existence of you has stopped. Maybe they realize how deafeningly quiet you are, and they reach out. They tell you to stick around because they care; but you know that they really mean: they’ve just gotten used to the white noise. There will be a lack—a noticeably empty, small space—if you cease to exist as you already do, as an almost insignificant part of the background music in their lives. They like things exactly as things are, so you can’t do that to them. You’ve got to keep suffering through your hell for what feels like an eternity, lest they have to live with the inconvenience of hearing a record scratch.

That’s really what depression is: existing in hell forever so that the people you care about won’t be sad for a couple of weeks. Feeling like your soul has been soaked in poison every waking minute of your life, but doing your best to keep it under wraps so that other people aren’t inconvenienced by you. And you do it, because you have a lot of love in your heart for your friends. You do it because you have hope for future happiness. Unfortunately, just like in the myth of Pandora, you’re never sure if that hope is the thing that is saving you, or if it’s the thing that’s been destroying you all along. Either way, you live.