I Loved My Depression, So It Left Me

All my life I have been stricken, STRICKEN, I SAY, with depression.

Depression— an amorphous, ill-defined sadness that was draped over me from an early age, like a smallpox blanket from settlers from a foreign neurological land (my parent’s genetics/propensity to drink Miller High Life before noon).

All my life I have tried to fight my depression, but it is like punching fog. All you wind up doing is flailing about like a little brother with an insufficient wingspan to hit your big brother, who has his palm on your forehead.

So, this year, I took a different route. I started to love my depression, and guess what? It left me. Like everyone does.

Like any Hollywood trope, I began my tryst with depression by eating Ben & Jerry’s in my bed and letting my comforter do what its namesake is intended to do. Then, of course, I watched The Office all the way through, twice. My depression and I began to fall for each other.

In the confines of my damp basement apartment, where no light can get in, I began to feel guilty about my depression. Surely it deserved a better life than the one I was providing it. Punching the clock, and immediately coming home. Never taking it salsa dancing, or to a pottery lesson. So, I began to take walks in Prospect Park with my depression. Rare warm February days with its sunlight hitting me and my depression in the face. Stopping to let me and my depression pet Labradoodles at the dog park.

A few weeks of walking in the sunshine and I decided maybe it was time to introduce my depression to my mom. Something about the warmth of her voice, the earnest love, seemed to turn my depression away. I could feel it becoming more distant.

I decided to start to go on runs with my depression, but that only made it more distant. We went to juice bars together, but it just faded further. Until, one day, my depression left me altogether.

My depression left me. Just like everyone does.