You Don’t Have to Validate Your Depression With How Bad Your Life Is
A short, gentle reminder for you and me
I’m having a bad day.
Everything feels blah. I don’t really want to do anything, nothing sounds like fun. Except maybe lying down in a cool dark room under a blanket and sleeping for approximately 16 hours.
Hello depression my old friend.
I’ve struggled with chronic depression for most of my life. It came to visit early in my teenage years and then decided to hang around because I am such a warm and inviting hostess. For years, I didn’t really understand that I had depression. All I knew was that I felt miserable a lot. And I also felt guilty.
Guilty, because I didn’t really feel like I had a good reason to be sad. Guilty, because other people “had it worse” so really, I should be grateful for how good my life was. Guilty, because I didn’t understand why I felt so sad and so stuck, unable to just get on with my life.
Now that I know that what I have is a mental illness that isn’t my fault, I feel less guilty and less like a trashcan person. But old habits die a difficult death and unfortunately, I haven’t been able to shake the guilt entirely.
Depression is an illness and it doesn’t care…