I am (NOT) okay

Depression can take many forms and many shapes. I know this because I have seen it up close, closer than I ever wanted to. The hardest part to explain is not the darkness itself but everything that happens in between.

The in-between is surviving without truly living. It is existing without collapsing, like waiting without knowing what you are waiting for. And I think this deserves language too, because for many people, this is where depression actually lives.

People often think depression is just sadness. Or heaviness. Or crying on bathroom floors. And sometimes, it is. But much of the time, it is quieter than that. Stranger. It is waking up and feeling like someone replaced your insides with wet sand. It is watching the day move forward while you struggle to get out of bed. It is brushing your teeth and wondering why something so small feels like a negotiation.

You know you are not drowning. But you are treading water. Your arms and legs grow tired in ways that are easy to ignore until they are not.

The in-between is the part I rarely hear anyone talk about. Not the crisis. Not the recovery. The gray space in the middle. In the gray, motivation does not disappear. It simply loses its weight. It is the long stretch where nothing is visibly wrong, but nothing feels right either.

Days start to feel fragile, as if they are held together with tape. The kind that peels a little more each time you move. It is answering “I am fine” without lying and without telling the truth either.

Maybe that is why it is so hard to explain. And even harder to ask for help. Because when nothing looks broken, it can feel impossible to justify needing support.

That is what depression looks like for me.

Not dramatic. Not poetic. Just strange. Unpredictable. Messy.

It is a hundred small moments where I am both here and not here at the same time. A version of myself that keeps showing up anyway. I persist for others, even when everything in me wants to disappear for a while.

And maybe that is where the story really begins. Not with the worst day or the best day. But somewhere in the middle. In the quiet frustration of trying to be a person while your mind pulls you in a direction you are working so hard to resist.

I do not have a perfect ending. Or a tidy message.

What I have is this:

Something shifted quietly, like a door clicking open in a house that has been sealed shut. Small. Almost easy to miss. And that was the beginning.

Today, I got out of bed.

Today, I did not lie when someone close to me asked how I was.

Today, I felt something that was not numbness.

That is not a triumph, maybe.

But it is real. And sometimes, reality is enough to keep going.

If you are in the in-between right now, know that you are not alone in it. And you do not have to rush your way out.

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Love,

Diane