You know how in a cartoon, whenever the character is sad, they walk around with a little rain cloud over their head? That’s kind of how it felt for me, except my cloud wasn’t just above my head. It was all around me, obscuring my vision with its fog.
I’m not exactly sure how it happened or why, but I was depressed for about five days. Suddenly, with no provocation, my outlook on life changed. For five days I was plagued with sadness and then apathy. And then, it was just gone.
I think it might have started off with a bad week. I want to say it was the worst week of my life, because my life has been wholly uneventful with little to no tragedy. I mean, my depression wasn’t really serious or anything, but it was pretty bad. It was listen-to-Bon-Iver-and-mope-all-day bad. I couldn’t motivate myself to do anything.
Susannah, you have to study for that Algebra II test. I’m failing anyways.
Susannah, you should go eat something, it’s been six hours. I don’t want food.
Susannah, you should feel something right now. Anything. I can’t.
The first two days, everything reduced me to tears. Anything spanning from having pasta for dinner or a sweater not being clean made me curl up in the fetal position and start my daily sobbing. Each day was just a series of disheartening events that made it feel like my day was ruined. But then every day, without fail, something new happened to make it worse. Then I would just remember the previous day’s events and that saddened me even more.
My period of sadness slowly segued into apathy. Nothing affected me, nothing interested me. I tried to act normal at school, but my depression was gnawing at me. My boyfriend asked me what was wrong, but I didn’t want to explain what I was feeling. My parents wanted to talk to me, but I had nothing to say to them. I just stopped caring. My surroundings were dull. Every color appeared as vibrant as before, but my life was tinged with gray.
My depression ended on a Monday morning. There was nothing special about that Monday; it was sunny and overwhelmingly hot outside. I woke up and ate a muffin, got dressed, brushed my teeth and tried to make myself resemble a human being. I didn’t even notice it had gone away at first. I went through the motions, and everything seemed normal. I started thinking about how normal things were, and that’s when I did a double-take.
Oh.
Things are normal.
Something in my life had shifted. One day, my life sucked. And then just like that, everything was ordinary.
I don’t really have a conclusion to this blog. I don’t have a lesson, or some underlying message. I don’t want to barrage you with clichés and greeting card sentiments. But what I will say is: life changes, but it can change back just as fast.
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