She's Back

This One's About Depression. It's Also About Fleetwood Mac.

I have depression.

I have had it probably since high school, but I went to high school in the ‘90’s when going to therapy was more of an outlier activity cloaked in shame and ignorance instead of the normalized right-of-passage it (thankfully) is closer to now. But this was the era when we were sent to school with peanut butter sandwiches and the safest “safe space” you could find would be on an ABC After School Special, and when screaming “You Outta Know” alone in your car was considered the height of self-care, so a genetic predisposition towards depression wasn’t something that was an open topic at the dinner table.

Given our origin story, my depression and I have had quite the roller coaster of a relationship. If my depression has been a needy partner seeking attention, I have been the aloof one of the pair. If my depression was the dramatic one, I have been the cold one. I have ignored its pleas for attention and its asking for help; it has refused to conform to my more palatable ways of existing in the world. Professionals might call our dynamic one of “anxious-avoidant.” My depression is the Stevie Nicks to my Lindsey Buckingham; the Owen Hunt to my Cristina Yang; the Felicity Porter to my Ben Covington (if you don’t know these references you were probably raised in a healthy home with good boundaries, or you’re just too young to appreciate them).

I used to be so ashamed of my depression that I never spoke of it, never talked about it, never even said it out loud (I know there’s a Harry Potter reference here somewhere but I was too busy listening to Fleetwood Mac and watching TV to get into all that). I had a friend in college who called me out for being depressed and I was so pissed I didn’t talk to her for a week. I’ve had boyfriends flag it gently but I ignored them, and I’ve even rebuffed more than one therapist who suggested as such (No I’m not depressed, I’m just here to talk about the fact that everything is awful and I feel like I’m moving through molasses and I don’t think I’ll ever meet any of my goals and I never want to have sex with my cute boyfriend and I probably drink too much on the weekends and my family is a mess because a bunch of them are struggling with mental health issues including depression….So no, I’m not “depressed”!)

I can’t remember now exactly when or how I accepted the fact (because it is a fact) that I have depression…It’s chemical, it’s genetic, it’s just a part of my wiring. It also flares up when triggered by certain things (such as alcohol, which is part of why I rarely drink anymore), certain circumstances (hi, 2025), and sometimes by nothing of note at all.

Which is what happened recently.

I’m a busy, active, healthy, employed mother with a business on the side, a happy marriage, a bunch of hobbies and people around and weekend plans….And I also have depression. The trouble is when you’re a high-functioning depressive person, it’s a lot like what I know high-functioning alcoholics to be like. You have the Thing, but you are doing all the other things, so it’s….confusing. Do people who have depression really pack their kids’ lunches every day with all the organic stuff and show up at work on time in good outfits and exceed expectations at all of their tasks and head home and play with their son and do bath/bed time and then hop on calls and do more work they’re good at?

Yes, yes they do.

Until they don’t.

And that’s the trick of it…You can be a walking, talking, living, breathing person in the midst of a depressive episode and still do all of the things you do every day. So no one knows. No one can see it.

But you can.

You know it’s here, it’s arrived, it’s a boxer you thought you knocked out last time but it’s come back for another round, and you are so tired of this fight you can barely lift your arms to throw even one more punch.

You know it’s here because it takes a little more effort to get out of bed, to get dressed, to get in the car, to get to work. It takes a little more effort to snap into “coach mode” on your calls. It takes a little more effort to get on the floor and play trains and make the dinner. You start to ignore calls, let texts build up, head to bed early instead of using the time to chat with your husband, because you just don’t have the energy for anyone who isn’t a child or a client or a colleague.

This most recent depressive episode was triggered by nothing - meaning nothing out of the ordinary, no big event or circumstance or habit change. And yet, when I look back now I can see the hints, the flashes, the slow creep of the weighted blanket that is my depression making its way up the bed slowly until suddenly I woke up one morning and was covered by it. And couldn’t get out of bed.

And I didn’t get up to pack the lunch.

And I went to work in my leggings with unwashed hair.

And I did some of my tasks but punted the rest to someone else.

And I didn’t do bath and bedtime.

And I didn’t pick up the laptop and keep working.

And I knew I was in trouble, but it was still - even now, after all this time - hard to say it out loud, and hard to raise my hand from under the water I was drowning in and ask for help, for a hand, for a life raft.

But my depression is a persistent, annoying partner in this situationship. My depression will continue to demand I pay attention, until I actually do.

And when I stop, finally, and turn my attention towards it and ask, “What do you want?!” (which I know I’m supposed to do with kindness and compassion but I’m just not there yet…) it actually does, pretty immediately, tell me what it wants. It’s often some version or mix of:

I want to sleep. I need to sleep.

I want less things on the to-do list. It’s overloaded and you know that.

I want to kick out the timeline for X or revisit why we’re doing Y.

I want you to actually look at that thing that’s pissing you off but you keep ignoring because FYI you know by now that at least part of your depression is anger with nowhere to go…

I want you to just notice me and give me a minute because I’ll stop having a toddler fit for your attention once you do.

And so I finally did listen. And my depression did as she promised.

She loosened her grip.

Not all the way. Not forever. But enough for me to remember that this moment, this episode, wasn’t a permanent state (it never is). It’s just a pause I didn’t ask for, but maybe needed.

And in a weird way, that made me grateful for her. She made me do some things I should have been doing. She made me shift some things that needed shifting. So my depression, however fucking annoying she may be, is not all bad.

I mean, let’s be honest - if Stevie and Lindsey never had any conflict, we never would have gotten Rumours.