I Didn't Know I Was Depressed. I Just Thought I Was Bad at Being a Mom.

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You know that commercial. The one that says "Where does depression hurt? Everywhere. Who does depression hurt? Everyone."

Yeah. I've lived that. Nothing has ever been more true.

Everyone's experience is different. For me it didn't look like what I thought depression was supposed to look like. For me it looked like telling myself I was antisocial and I just liked being alone. Binge watching Asian dramas back to back and getting lost in urban lit for hours. (Escapism. Detachment. A brain that needed to be anywhere but here.) Ordering takeout four days out of the week because cooking felt like climbing a mountain. Existing, just enough, while everything around me quietly fell apart.

And I didn't even see it happening.

When I finally took the blindfold off it felt like being slapped awake from a deep sleep. Like I opened my eyes, looked around, and saw the damage I didn't even know I was causing.

It was my first grader with a mouth full of cavities.

It was my teenage daughter isolating herself in her room, feeling lonely because I wouldn't let her or any of my other kids leave the house.

It was realizing they had emulated my very existence. That I had somehow shaped something onto their personalities that wasn't who they actually were.

It was looking at the same to-do list. The same journal entry. For five years. (Not exaggerating. Five years.)

It was realizing I didn't know who I was anymore. What I liked. What I wanted. Nothing.

It was needing dental work because somewhere along the way I stopped taking care of myself and didn't even notice.

It was looking at my kids and wondering how unloved they must have felt.

That's what depression actually looked like for me. Quieter than any commercial.

And now I had a choice. Feel incompetent and inadequate about it, the same feelings that locked me in that room in the first place, or wake up and do something about it. (Awareness. Acceptance. The hardest and most necessary thing.)

I chose to do something about it.

Let me explain what I mean by that dark room. This is the only way I know how to describe what the last few years actually felt like inside my head.

Depression is like being forced into a dark room. Blindfolded. Lights off.

And who's forcing you in there?

You. Your own brain.

It shoves you in and locks the door behind you. But it leaves just a tiny crack of light at the bottom. Just enough to know it exists. Just enough to remind you.

All you have to do is walk over there. Open the door. Get out.

Simple, right?

Except you're blindfolded. The room is pitch black. You don't know the layout, what's on the floor, what's waiting for you in the corners. So you do what any person would do. You stretch your arms out and try to feel your way forward.

But there's nothing to grab onto.

And you trip.

Over and over again. Every attempt sends you further back. Deeper into the room. Further from the door. Further from that little crack of light. You try again. And again. And again.

Still tripping. Still ending up in a corner. Never at the door. Never at the light.

Until one day you stop trying to get out.

You didn't give up. You learned the room.

You know where every obstacle is now. You know how to step around them, how to move through the darkness without falling anymore. You've memorized every inch. Every nook, every corner, every bump. (High-functioning depression.) You're not visibly falling apart. You're just managing. Surviving. The room became familiar. And familiar started to feel like safe.

So you stay.

You stay because you genuinely don't know how to leave. And part of you, if you're honest, is afraid to try.

I want to be clear about something here.

The blindfold isn't about not knowing what's happening to you. I always knew. I was painfully, frustratingly self-aware the entire time. That's actually the part nobody talks about. You can see exactly what's happening to yourself and still not be able to move. That's depression too. That's real.

The blindfold is denial. Refusal to accept it. (Knowing something is wrong doesn't mean you're ready to face it. I knew. I just wasn't ready.)

The moment I finally accepted it, really accepted it, an uninvited guest showed up immediately.

Anxiety.

Loud. Convincing. And honestly? Kind of reasonable sounding.

Don't open that door. You've been in the dark too long. You know this room. It's safe here. What if the light is too much? What if it's worse out there?

And right on cue, depression joins in.

I agree. Stay. You know how to survive in here.

They almost always travel together, depression and anxiety. (For me personally it was the full trifecta. ADHD, depression, and anxiety, all three all the time. If you have depression, anxiety has more than likely pulled up a chair too. They rarely come alone.)

Depression tells you that you can't.
Anxiety tells you that you shouldn't.

But you've already accepted it. You can't un-know what you now know.

You walk to the door. Your hand wraps around the knob.

And that's when the whole room throws a party to keep you there.

Fear. Shame. Guilt. Uncertainty. Insecurity. Every voice you've ever silenced, every wound you never healed. All of them loud, all at once. You and your little friends having a whole event. (Self-pity. Wallowing. It's valid. It's also keeping you stuck.)

Stay. Stay. Stay.

But then something outside that door starts getting louder than the party.

Every person who ever tried to reach you. Every voice that said you matter, get some help, you're worth it. The version of yourself you keep catching glimpses of. Your kids. Your life. Your unlived dreams.

It gets louder than the noise in the room.

And you say, that's it. I'm done. This party has gone on long enough.

You bust open the door. (Therapy. Medication. Asking for help. Destigmatizing what's happening to you. Whatever that looks like, you opened it.) And I'll say this from personal experience. Medication helped me. It helped me get my hand on that knob in the first place. I'm not saying it's for everyone. I'm saying it was part of my story and I'm not ashamed of that.

The light hits you all at once. Temporary blindness. It's a lot.

But you step out anyway.

And slowly, slowly, your eyes start to adjust.

You settle into the new environment. But now there are new obstacles. Unlike the dark room where you learned to step over them, ignore them, work around them, out here you actually have to deal with them. (Recovery. Unlearning. Relearning how to live.) You can't just exist anymore. You have to do.

And nobody warned you about how hard that part would be.

The more you try to adjust to the light, the more your feet want to go back. And the scary part? You don't even realize it's happening. You just look up one day and you're climbing the stairs again. (Relapse. Regression. It doesn't mean you failed. It means you're human.)

You end up back there and then you realize: that dark room was just one tiny room in a whole house.

The real light is outside the front door.

Open it. Get some fresh air. Say hi to your neighbors. Live your life the way you actually want to.

But you're stuck again.

You open the front door. You can see outside. You can feel the air from where you're standing. But your feet won't move. You won't step out. Won't get some sun. Nothing.

It's good enough to just stand in the doorway and look out.

And here comes anxiety again. This time it sounds like a kind friend. Gentle. Reasonable.

You're okay. Look how far you've come. You made it out of that room. That was everything. The couch, the living room, the light. That's a huge step from laying in bed all day, body aching, brain that won't shut up. You're not ready for outside yet. There's more out there. Let's not rush.

And it holds your hand. And leads you right back to the couch.

Because after all, you're in the light now.

That's progress, right?

It is. It's also a trap if you stay there too long.

Because slowly, without realizing it, you find yourself standing at that dark room door again. Hand on the knob. Ready to go back in.

Here's where I am right now.

I haven't fully walked through the front door yet. I'm not going to pretend I have. It's still scary. The outside still feels like a lot some days.

But I'm standing in the doorway.

The front door, my goals, my fears, the life I actually want to live, that's what's going to keep me out of that room for good. And I'm working toward it. Baby steps. Some days smaller than others.

I'm not there yet.

And I'm also not going back to that room.

My feet are pointed in the right direction.

That's enough for today. ✦

Please talk to someone. You deserve that. You always did.

This is where I started. ✦

If you're standing in the doorway, or still in the room, these are the tools I built for women exactly like us.

For your brain

For your identity

For rebuilding

With love, T. empowHERment Hub