Better days, worse days

I was talking the other day with a friend who reminded me of a common misconception about depression.

Depression, the kind we're talking about here, isn't a situational, occasional thing. It is a chronic thing. Situations can (and do) make it better or worse, but it's never gone. It's not something that goes away.

If "normal emotions" was a line on a graph, the depressed person's "normal" would fall anywhere from a little bit to a whole lot lower than that. So too, the peaks and valleys of the emotional roller coaster of life are pretty much always a little lower than they would be for someone without depression.

I guess, in the simplest terms, there is no day that depression doesn't affect me. Some days it's better; some days it's worse. But it's always there.

Now, this doesn't mean I'm never truly happy! I surely am! It just makes it a lot easier to fall from happy back to something else, and maybe a little harder to get there in the first place.

Anyway, all this to say, part of what makes struggling with depression extra difficult is the constant expectation from others that we will "snap out of it" or "get better". We won't. That's not how this works. Anyone with depression already knows this. To you, I say, don't give up. If you love someone who struggles with depression, know that it IS a struggle, and that the road is long. Don't think that the first mountain you make it to with them means the valleys are all behind you. Be ready to take their hand again and face the darkness of the valley together; they'll need you.