I'm no stranger to depressive episodes, though thankfully mine are sparse and usually brief: sometimes a day or two, though on rare occasions perhaps a week or more. I'm thankful mine have never progressed into anything serious. That said, I'd like to discuss something that's become somewhat of a theme in my conversations lately about depression, and something I hope you, the reader, might find useful when combatting this Great and Terrible Beast yourself.
To begin, I'd like to draw a distinction between depression and melancholy. There's a beauty to melancholy1 that there simply isn't with depression. One begets yearning, the other smothers everything in its path. I love melancholy, I really do, enough that sometimes I work to keep it going a little longer. Melancholy is a mourning wistfulness, the loss of something dearly loved, a cousin of grief and dour predilections.
Depression is a plastic bag, thrown over your head to choke off every breath of air until you succumb to its will. It's insidious, and it lies to you.
The Venomous Snake
Depression, however brief or fleeting, is the bedfellow of despair. They don't always arrive together, but they are never long apart. Both weave a web of thought that strangles fragile hope and sets to bury will and want beneath the mountain of excuse.
Despair works slowly, convincing—no, proving—to you that this is how the world is: that it's terrible, that it has always been terrible, and that it will always be terrible. Then Depression swoops in like a hero to stifle that pain with dullness.
Depression and Despair have all the rhetorical skill of Cicero: ethos, pathos, and lagos enough to destroy whatever justification you can weakly muster to your own defense. That's what makes Depression and Despair the monsters that they are. They pull the ultimate trick: not only to convince you of their lies, but to convince you that they—not hope—hold the truth about the world, that theirs is the only word you can trust, and that no amount of reason, logic, hope, or will can overcome their hold and free you from their grasp. They are fighters, brandishing their weapons of thought that cut you where it hurts the most.
And their trap is nearly perfect. Nearly.
In D&D a Fighter is extremely difficult to kill, but a Wizard is invincible if they're properly prepared. No swashbuckling swordsman will ever survive the onslaught of a Wizard's Tower properly fortified. Yet that invincibility requires time to set traps, lay wards, and summon reinforcements.
Gathering Reinforcements
I remember a time, about a year ago, when I was in the throws of a particularly bad depressive episode. Every day was the same: I was smothered, unmotivated, sad, dull. I had always felt this way. Weeks had passed since I'd felt anything but soul crushing despair or mind-numbing flatness.
It was right before bed.
Usually I keep a journal, but lately I hadn't kept it up. The depression was overwhelming. I had nothing to write about. Yet, I needed a win, any win. So I summoned the will to write a single sentence. Win complete. But then Despair told me to flip back a few pages, to read a few old entries, and to confirm my worst fears: that it had always been this way and therefore always would be.
That was its mistake, for in those prior pages lurked a trap that Past Me had unwittingly set. Not a page back, two days prior, it read: "Great day. Really great."
Cracks emerged in the edifice.
I blinked, confused. Had I written this? Was my memory failing me? How could I not remember just two days ago? Suddenly, I did remember. It had been a good day, a great day even! I flipped back further. Another, three days before that: great. Another: two days before that. One a night out, another: a dinner with family, a third: a truly excellent band practice.
How had I forgotten it all?
Stunned, I set the journal down. Memories of seeming-distant days flooded in and I saw the truth. It was as if I'd awoken from a sleep and now could see the nonsense of my dreams. It'd all been a lie, the perfect lie. Perfect because my depression knew exactly how to convince me, knew precisely how to ensure I'd never escape its grasp because it is me. It knows my strengths and weaknesses seemingly better than I do. Yet it had forgotten about my reinforcements—and nearly made me forget them too. But the cavalry had now been called and my past selves had arrived.
Thus it was the tide of battle turned.
Evidence of Prior Joy
I will not tell you that reading those prior journal entries "cured" my depression that day, nor has it ever in the times I've relied upon them since. One cannot vanquish such a beast in one blow. This is not a battle that can be won by your present self alone. However, we are not only our present self. We are the sums of all the people we have ever been and in our darkest hour we can lean on those prior selves for strength. Winning this battle, it takes time. It takes friends and it takes help—which comes in many forms.
Yet I will tell you that it helps. Every time, it helps. On good days and bad, I try to write something in that little book, to gather evidence of prior joy, because that is the best weapon I have found in my battle with this beast. I didn't start journalling years ago with this (or any) goal in mind and never did I imagine that journalling would do anything to help with depression, but it does, precisely because it breaks the illusion that we have perfect memories of anything, even of ourselves.
Such a thought is powerful, but even those are brittle in Depression's grasp. Nothing you say or do in that moment will do you any good, yet writing allows us to bring forth our past selves, through the Mists of Time, and let them speak, not in the words we imagine they had spoke, but in the words they wrote for themselves.
