When Depression Slides in All Sneaky

by Sharon Kayne

I got depressed yesterday and I still don’t really know why. It’s not like I need to know—I mean, the real reason I get depressed is because my brain chemistry is screwed up—but it’d be kinda nice to know what exactly set it off this time.

Usually, my depression is set off by bad news, or when something very annoying or frustrating happens. Then boom! The Dark Pit of Depression (or DPD, as I like to call it) opens up beneath me and I’m instantly sucked down. I don’t really understand the chemistry of it, but either my serotonin levels crater or the receptors in my brain, which are supposed to handle the serotonin, short circuit or something. I know this because for 25 years my depression was effectively managed by an SSRI—or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor—otherwise known as Zoloft. I know my brain chemistry is at fault because for 25 years, Zoloft allowed me to feel normal. Not good. Not happy. Just normal. I was, for that lovely quarter-century, not drawn down into a freaking DPD every few weeks like I had been before. Sadly, the Zoloft eventually stopped working. I’m on a different drug now, but it’s not nearly as good.

So, anyway, back to my story… While depression is usually triggered by something obvious, sometimes it just sorta slips in gradually and sneaky and I’m not sure why. Like the DPD opens up beneath me slowly, sucking me in while I watch all the color drain from my life. To be clear, depression isn’t always about feeling bad. Sometimes it’s more about the inability to feel good. You can look around you and see that everything in your life is just fine, all things considered. But you simply lack the ability to feel good about it. Or about anything.

I did wake up to some pretty bad news yesterday. I found out, via email, that I had lost the tax credits that pay for my health insurance. I had lost them because somehow I had managed to miss the single, solitary email the health insurance exchange had sent me back in October letting me know that I had to reapply for the credits. When I learned this, I freaked out, of course, and called the insurance exchange. I ended up spending the better part of an hour on the phone with a nice young man who walked me through the application on the website. Spending time with customer service folks dealing with an issue like health insurance is never a good thing, but it wasn’t all that bad. Turns out he is an aspiring novelist and when he found out I was a novelist, he was very keen to chat with me. I gave him a few tips on self-publishing, and he got me my tax credits back. So, in all, it was a story with a happy ending. It wasn’t fun, but it was, in fact, a more pleasant way to spend my time than being forced to sit in the “Melania” movie, for example.

Still, despite the happy ending, it started the slide into the DPD. I fought it for as long as I could. I had stuff to do, after all. But once the Dark Pit of Depression begins to open beneath you, you’re screwed. You had stuff to accomplish today? Too bad. Depression has shit all over you and there’s nothing to do about it but take a cannabis gummy, spend the rest of the day stoned, and hope you feel better when you wake up in the morning. So that’s what I did.

I do feel better than I did yesterday, but I still don’t feel good. I feel slightly less not-good than I did yesterday. By tomorrow I might be fine. I wasted the better part of the day, but that’s one great thing about being retired: you no longer have to pretend you’re not completely unfunctional. You can just endure the disfunction until it goes away. Living with depression is exhausting, but it’s nothing compared to having to pretend that you’re not depressed. That kills me.

Follow me on Facebook or Instagram, or sign up for my monthly newsletter (here) to be informed of my new posts. Also, please follow me on Amazon, Goodreads and BookBub.