Depression Has Turned Me Into a Housewife
For the past few weeks, I’ve been inclined to play housewife. I don’t own a house and I’m not anyone’s wife, nor has my partner ever imposed gender roles on our relationship. And yet, I have relegated myself to this position because I don’t know what else I can be.
I’ve spent the past three weeks drifting through a whole lot of nothingness, feeling as though my skull is filled with a pile of bricks, leaving no room for anything except heaviness. I feel paralyzed mentally and physically. The slightest inconvenience sets off anger and tears. I’m lucky if I eat all three meals without one of them being salt and vinegar chips or coffee.
I canceled an important appointment because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to stop crying long enough to go. I haven’t completed a single piece of writing in a long time. (This one is an exception, but it’s taken way longer than usual and feels jumbled, messy, and low-quality).
I am filled with dread every morning because I know I am bound to disappoint myself and those I work for.
Depression like this is all too familiar to me. Sometimes I cannot remember life without it. It is hard to believe I was ever someone who felt there weren’t enough hours in a day, who was bubbling with excitement over the sheer prospect of being alive. That person must be underground, or through a mirror. She is my alternate self. She does not exist on the same plane as this current self, who has no joy and disregards herself because she doesn’t know what is left to regard.
Happiness, or I suppose the state of being content with life, has always been suspicious to me. When you battle depression on and off for half of your short life, a state of perpetual discomfort with existence seasoned with nagging self-hatred seems like the norm. The land of “okay” is a strange place for my mind to live, like an altered state only accessed via drugs, even though medication hasn’t always been the only way I’ve reached “okay.”
Most of the discussions of happiness describe what it is not. We always chase the “‘not happiness” things anyway, though, because I think we all think it will be different for us. What didn’t work for others might be our own special magic serum. The material items and luxury hotel experiences and Disney World…
