Darkness, my old friend

"High-functioning depression" is such a flattering phrase. It makes what I have sound like a gift or a prize, not a weight. It's sometimes called chronic depression, or persistent depressive disorder, abbreviated as PDD in the literature, but I prefer the old term: "dysthymia," with its Greek roots. It sounds lovely.

When I first started seeing a therapist, I tried to quantify my emotions. I downloaded various apps that asked me to rate my mood each day: on a scale from 1 to 10; using various  shades of red, orange, yellow, green; a happy face or a frowny face or somewhere in between. I didn't know what I was doing wrong. One day, she finally broke it to me gently: "While other people can rate their happiness from 1 to 10, you may never get past an 8 or 9, no matter what." How crushing, to be told the truth.

That's what dysthymia is. It cheats me of my upper register, makes ecstasy and exhilaration the stuff of fiction or other people's lives, never my own. It means that if I had to hold tight to a single truly happy memory to ward off a horde of Dementors, I couldn't save myself. It isn't soul-crushing despair, but it makes me wonder sometimes if I have a soul at all.

It's boring, is what it is, honestly. I don't cry much. I don't turn to self harm or substance abuse or hypersexuality to cope. I mostly lie in bed and stay there. I mostly lie to my friends and say I'm just tired. Sometimes I'm sort of a downer at parties, but most of the time I'm not. Mostly I feel like I'm waiting and waiting for something that will never come, but there's nothing to do but hope without expectation.

I'm never not a little bit depressed. Sometimes I'm a little more, but never any less.

To some people, this sounds unthinkably bleak. Please accept my sincere congratulations on your capacity to feel joy. To some people, this doesn't sound that bad at all, relatively; if so, I'm sorry. There are much harder, uglier, worse ways to live, but this is mine.

Today is World Mental Health Day, but so is tomorrow and the next day and every day after that for anyone living with chronic mental illness. Today and every day, I love you and am here for you. Thank you for being here for me.