Living With Depression, I'm Not Afraid of the Fog

I’m writing this from Scotland on a very dark, cold and foggy night. It looks like the beginning of a horror movie and it’s moving in thick and fast. I was leaving to walk my mum’s dog and she asked me to take my phone. “Why?” I asked. “Well, it looks frightening out there. Just take your phone please.”

I didn’t take my phone, I left it and took my dog into the small park close by which is actually an old cemetery (queue creepy music).

But as I walked around, I thought to myself, why wasn’t I afraid of the fog and dark? And that’s when it came to me that being out there in the fog is what living with depression is like.

In a strange way, I’m not frightened because that’s what I’m used to. The fog is there with me every day. Some days it’s thick and heavy and slows me down, clinging onto every part of me. Tangling itself around my limbs like creeping ivy pulling me back or keeping me stuck. Some days it’s lighter, visibility is good and I can walk freely, but I still feel it and know it’s there waiting and that it’s edging closer.

I’m not frightened there in the fog because I know it so well. It will most likely always be there and I will navigate through it each day at a time using the tools I have learned along the way.

So for those walking through the fog just like me, keep going. You’re not alone. Maybe we will even bump into each other out there and guide each other through it.