You Shouldn’t Have to Get Used to Being Depressed

But here we are.

Matthew Maniaci
Thing a Day
Published in
6 min readDec 21, 2021

--

Photo by christopher lemercier on Unsplash

This year has been one of stress and depression for me. The stress has been bad and is mostly related to work, but stress is a factor in all of our lives and is something that we all get used to in our own ways.

The depression, however, has been a wee bit more of a struggle. The first half of the year was fine enough — the work stress wore me down quite a bit, but it wasn’t outside the realm of normal work stress. However, as the year wore on, my nerves wore down and I started feeling the effects of burnout and depression.

Right now, I’m on my holiday vacation and am taking time to recuperate. The seasonal depression that comes with the shortening of the days is creeping in a bit, but not as bad as in years past. I think that has to do with my working from home, but I don’t know for sure.

None of this is particularly new for me, since I’m used to the feelings of depression that come and go with the seasons and my various mood fluctuations. Being bipolar means that sometimes, I get depressed for no reason, and I’ve become used to it.

That’s the thing, though — I shouldn’t have to get used to regular bouts of depression. It really, really sucks, and I don’t wish it on anyone, but millions of people around the world deal with it every day. And, for quite a few of us who have mental health diagnoses or have lived with it long enough to know what it is, we have become accustomed to the feeling of depression.

For many of us, we take our antidepressants every day, we do our best to practice self-care and do things that are healthy for us, and we talk to our therapists and support networks to get through it. However, that doesn’t change the feelings of familiarity that come with our depression.

I’ve used a mashed potato analogy to describe depression before — it’s like everything in life is just bland, unseasoned mashed potatoes, and no matter what spices you add, it’s just bland potatoes. So, you stop trying to do anything to make your potatoes taste better. What’s the point? It’ll all just taste bland and uninteresting.

Regular bouts of depression are like going back to that bowl of mashed potatoes again. The feeling is familiar, and we…

--

--

Matthew Maniaci
Thing a Day

I write about everything from my experience with mental illness to politics to philosophy. Much of my so-called "wisdom" is from Tumblr dot com. He/him/his.