On living with depression
Depression is a weird roommate to have. If it behaves, it sort of fades into the background, doing its own thing. It’s not home a lot, the most you ever see each other is once a week on Sunday mornings, both a little grouchy, both on your way in or out of the door. Sometimes you might wake up and hear it rustle in the kitchen late at night. Other times, it stays out for days on end, and you wonder where it might be, and who’s it hanging out with.
Still, the evidence remains. Stuff scattered throughout the apartment – an empty room filled with furniture that doesn’t match your taste, a bed with a bunched, unchanged sheet, strange smells not your own. You can clean up all you want, but these things are not yours to get rid of, and will be around, whether you like it or not. Such is life after all with a roommate. Even a roommate you can’t remember having chosen.
Over time, I’ve gotten to know my depression well. Can’t say I enjoy having this co-tenant, and I’ve spent a good deal of my time resenting and lamenting it. But the older I get, the more I get used to it, somewhat of a lesser evil. It’s not that I’ve grown to like it… but I at least have learned a great deal about it. I’ve begun to understand what triggers it, when it ramps up and down, how I am contributing to its patterns, but also when I don’t, and it still blazes on its own, with me along for the ride.
And blaze my depression can, a furnace of blistering heat, leaving everything I am scorched and unrecognizable, never the same again. My mirror reveals this strange man, covered in scarring, sore, fragile, in constant need of attention and relief. A version of me I resent, pitiful and sad, one I never thought I’d become, but one I can’t neglect.
Yeah, I guess this is not just a roommate, this depression of mine, but a life partner. This is a relationship in my life where I don’t seem to have any say in what the future will hold. I can’t remember saying ‘I do’, but it sure feels like the commitment has been made. It must’ve been an arranged marriage.