Depression Debunked
My friend M. was a therapist for much of her working life. Now retired, it’s still in her blood. Just as someone with a hammer seeks out nails, she’s quick to say “You’re depressed” when I express the slightest off mood, when I tell her I feel bored, bothered, or bitchy. No, I reply, if I’m frustrated because my writing is at a temporary standstill or cranky because I haven’t had enough alone time for the past two years, it doesn’t mean I’m depressed. She thinks I’m in denial.
I mention the generic ennui that has me in its grip. My mind is blank; I have nothing to say, nothing I want to do. I know it’s just a brief patch, I say, and I’ll slog through it.
She wields her hammer. “Are you depressed?” With the fearsome weight of Covid, the Russians, and the Republicans, she suggests, “Everything piles up.”
The word grates on me. I demur. Not depressed, I say, just at a temporary low ebb. Present, future, personal, global, all appear dismal, but I shuck things off quickly and easily. I don’t wear blinders—I discern and detach.
In my thirties, a single mother, working and going to school—over committed, overworked, overwhelmed—I had a boyfriend in the same situation, except that he was perpetually angry with his ex, his boss, his thesis advisor, with life in general. He unloaded his woes relentlessly. “I’m so depressed,” he would say. He was needy, so I didn’t burden him with my troubles, which were minor and under control. My reward for being a long-suffering listener came when he accused me of being shallow because I didn’t get depressed. I told him he had enough for both of us. I still brandish the story proudly, claim it as a measure of my good sense and emotional stability.
M. acquiesces with a caveat: “Don’t underestimate the effects of the world creeping in through the cracks of consciousness.”
Global events and personal crises continually lay siege against our best defenses. There’s no time in recorded history without some threat of war, evildoers domestic and foreign, death and destruction, innumerable social catastrophes. Personal losses accrue throughout life, and we’re undone if we don’t learn to absorb them.
Depression is real and can be debilitating. Which is reason not to trivialize it by throwing the word around recklessly. Depression has become a catch-all that may not accurately describe the situation. Republicans, Russians, and Covid are among the many impediments that render me—at various times and circumstances—dismayed, disappointed, distressed, disheartened, dispirited, disgusted, disconcerted, disillusioned. I may feel dejected, deflated, demoralized. Or disconnected, disengaged, detached. Language, rich in subtlety, enables me to pin down the nuances. From myriad words I try to isolate the precise ones to describe how I feel.
This flash|nonfiction first appeared here, at Prose Online.