How I Find My Way Out When I Fall Down the Well of Depression

Sometimes I can feel it, in my chest. It’s the subtle click of a key in a lock. It can come out of nowhere. I’ll be talking to my brother on the phone, we’re joking around, everything is grand and then I feel it: click. And I’ll know this is it. I’m going to hang up the phone and everything will be the same but I’ll be on the outside looking in now, no longer able to experience life, merely observe it. The part of me that loved and lived and acted is gone, fallen down a deep, deep well, lost and unreachable. And the “me” who’s left here — I just watch. I can’t feel. The only thing I can feel, when I do feel, is the enormous, overwhelming agony of being. Which of these lost souls am I? The one here, moving this body, looking out through these eyes, or the one lost in the well, the one who lives and loves and feels and is now gone?

The mind is a powerful, miraculous thing. It creates breath, it commands the body, it thinks and plans and loves and feels and all of these things at once. But now, it fractures. It loses command of the body and now must beg the limbs to obey, and more often than not they rebel. The body no longer does what the mind tells it to do. The mind says “rise” and the body does not rise. The mind screams at the eyes to open but they do not open. They have a voice of their own now. They argue back. Back and forth the argument goes and all the while, the eyes still have not opened.

Sometimes, the mind must concentrate all its effort on simply continuing to breathe — In. Out. Even the lungs are depressed. They do not want to work today. They want to be left alone. Finally, the mind forces them to breathe in again. And on they battle, with the mind fighting just to keep the breath going in and out and in again. Tears flow out and at first, I don’t know why and then I know — it is from the shear frustration and exhaustion of having to fight so hard just to keep existing — of fighting the body at every turn. The one who animated the body is not there and the mind is trying to compensate but it is just too much for the mind to handle all alone.

And this is how the world narrows to a single thought. Nothing else can exist when all one’s being is consumed with just continuing to exist from one moment to the next. For me, I come home from work and my dogs demand to be let out, so I take them out. They do their business and we go back in again. Sometimes I am impatient but I try not to be impatient. Part of me knows I must feed them, refill their water. This seems hard. I consider doing it later but I know I won’t, and I love them, and they’re looking at me expectantly, so I put food in their bowls and give them water to drink. This is the only thing that keeps me from collapsing inward completely, being needed like this. Even though it takes so much effort to go through these motions, I’m glad for having to do it.

There is a house around me. Everything demands attention. But I can’t give it. The laundry and the dishes and the trash and the scrubbing and the putting things away – it’s all there and I don’t know what to do with it all so I turn my back and I crawl into bed and it all goes away. Nothing exists now but this blanket that covers my head and the breathing — in and out. If my dogs climb into my bed then they exist too. I like when they climb into the bed with me. They lay at my side and they are breathing too and it comforts me. Sometimes they demand attention and I try to give it but after a little while I can give no more and I hide my hands and eventually they give up and lie down at my sides again. I feel badly about this, that I am not giving them all they need. But I am glad I was able to give them something and not nothing. I’m glad I have anything at all to give.

Do one thing.

Then do the next one thing.

That is the way out.

How long does it go on like this? Days, weeks, months? I don’t know, but too long, always too long. And then a day comes when I remember. I remember the way out. It goes like this: “Answer the phone. Accept all invitations. Do not hide from people. Be with them. They will draw you out.” And, “Do one thing. Then do the next one thing.”

The mind in this state can still only hold one thought at a time, see one thing at a time. So I give it only one small task at a time. Yes, all the clothes are a mountain of laundry, but it is overwhelming to think of. So I say to my brain, “You do not have to do that big mountain over there. All you have to do is one thing. Turn the washer on. Put soap in it. Nothing else is required of you.” So, I do that one thing and then I say, “You do not have to do that big mountain over there. All you have to do is one thing. Pick out all the whites and put them in the washer over there.” And so I do. Sometimes I get through the whole mountain this way. Sometimes that’s all I have in me and I am back in bed, under the covers. But I still did one thing more than I would have otherwise. The girl in the well has taken a step towards the light. It is a very long climb. But I know if I keep doing this, one thing at a time, one step at a time, I will eventually be whole again.

A version of this article was previously published on the author’s blog.