Feeling Down

I’m feeling down. This is, really, not a national emergency. It’s not even a unique event. It’s just a normal part of my week. Living with depression means understanding that, sometimes, you will feel down and there won’t be a good reason why. I had an OK morning. I got to work on time. I had a decent breakfast. I have no reason to be down, really: I have a family who loves me, I have a decent job. There are plenty of people who are worse off than I am. But there it is.

 It is really not the being down, but how one responds to it, that makes the difference. I suppose I could point to a lot of reasons why I might be down, but I don’t want to belabor the point. Ultimately, whether the feeling is just some chemical weirdness in my brain, or born out of some actual reaction to the world, it’s there. Sitting with it, noticing it, talking about it; these are the ways I’ve learned, that I’ve taught myself, to cope with it all.

 But it doesn’t define me as a person. It doesn’t make me different from other beings drawing breath. We are all in this together. So, despite the feelings of loneliness that I feel, those feelings I get from time to time of being an alien in a crowd of normal folk, I know that we are all built with the same kind of DNA. I am not alone. There are the sounds of people’s voices just down the hall, or across the way. So, I comfort myself and I go on.

Here’s hoping you will, too.