There were mornings I didn’t get up. Not in the cute, snooze button too many times sense. That kind of tired I understood. I mean I didn’t fucking get up.
Shower? No. Eating? Rarely. Work? Eventually. But only because I was afraid of what would happen if I didn’t work. Not to me, but to the image of my I’d been dragging along.
Sometimes I call it a fog. But fog feels too soft. It’s more like walking in wet cement and every breath hardens it.
You move less, and you become less.
I used to think depression looked like tears and sad music. Mine was silence. Avoided texts. Unpaid bills. Missed shifts. Standing in the grocery store staring at food for an appetite I didn’t seem to have.
I didn’t know how heavy nothing feels.
And if you’re lucky, or stubborn, or have enough people around, you don’t disappear.
I didn’t get better.
Not really.
But I got functional.
And that sounds bleak. Until you’ve been non-functional. Then it’s everything.
I started to find small things again. A good coffee. A walk. A good conversation. A community.
I still carry that version of me. I scratch at it like a scar. It doesn’t hurt, but it reminds me.
