You hear it all the time: “im a bit depressed”. You might use it when your favourite soap character makes the wrong love choice. Its everyday.

But what does it feel like to really be depressed?

Depression is a strange illness.

It makes you feel nothing but at the same time feel everything.

Depression is like living behind a screen, the world is fuzzy. So any crack in the screen is multiplied a million percent.

Depression is like the world is grey. So any colour that comes through is dazzling.

Depression makes you not care. But when you do care, you care more than youve ever cared before.

Depression robs you of every emotion. Until it gives you every emotion to feel at once.

You know when you’re drunk and if you are a happy drunk you think everything is hysterical; if you are a sad drunk you cry because everything is the end of the world; if you are an angry drunk you want to hit everyone because they surely deserve it. Imagine being drunk ALL the time. You’re hysterical laughing, then you’re crying, then you’re aggressive, all at the same time, one after the other, in rotation, its repetitive, its erratic. Anyone in their right mind would stop drinking. Except when you’re depressed you cant, because the chemicals are in your brain, in your DNA, its just you. You cant feel one emotion at a time, you cant feel emotion on a sliding scale. Its nothing or everything. That’s your life. Anyone would choose nothing. You go out of your way to avoid any emotion. You become a robot.

And that becomes exhausting. Living a life without colour is boring. And boring makes you want to go to sleep. But then something, anything happens and there’s this dazzling disco ball of a million lights and thoughts and emotions so its impossible to sleep.

Living your life constantly avoiding the excessive noise, light, emotion is hard work. So every step you make is hard work. Imagine a child playing the “don’t step on the cracks” game, except the pavement is crazy paving and you have clown feet and a blindfold and its everyday.

But your brain doesn’t explain this. You have no comprehension of why you are so exhausted, why every step feels like a hundred, why every emotion is multiplied.

That’s just life.

So you pretend everything is fine. You see everyone else getting up, laughing, meeting up, doing chores, going to work. So it must be you. YOU’RE stupid, YOU’RE useless. YOU might as well be dead.

My life is beige. I get up. I take the kids to school. I go to work. I come home from work. I pick the kids up from school. I make the kids food. I do homework. I go to bed.

Then i get a phonecall in work to say a child is ill and i have to pick them up early.

No, no, wait…..

i cant do that because its not in my plan….

That means my baby is unhappy; that means the school think Im useless; that means work think im incapable; that means the world cannot continue.

THAT.

THAT is what depression feels like.

Feeling. A least for me. Is ‘a very bad thing’. It opens the flood gates that once opened, cannot be stopped.

Dont tell me “im a bit depressed”. Because you have clearly no comprehension of the word.