Uursha, a member of our Forum, shares her experiences with how depression affects even the most common aspects of our lives and skews our perceptions toward dark undercurrents. She writes, “When depression is at its peak, or shall I say, really, it's all time lowest doesn't it seem that:
- The toothbrush is somehow heavier.
- The dish pile seems much higher.
- The house you live in seems much larger when it comes time to clean it.
- The water spray coming out of the shower head seems cruel, harsh, and obtrusive.
- Even your most favorite comfortable shirt seems scratchy and itchy.
- The vacuum looks like a demon from the bowels of hades.
- A hairbrush looks foreign.
- Your image in the mirror becomes worse than you thought it was.
- You stare at your medicines lined up on the counter and think, “Why Bother?”
- You screen your phone calls because every ring of the phone is a banging, loud personal invasion of your cocoon.
- Friends' happy lilting voices on the answering machine seem like rail road spikes in your head.
- It seems strange that you own hermit crabs, because what the hell do they do all day anyway?
- You start to feel like a hermit crab.
- The hermit crab's life doesn't seem so bad after all.
- Better feed the hermit crabs - kinda forgot - but they don't eat much anyway. They never move so how can you even tell if they are still alive? Maybe you've been feeding dead hermit crabs for the last month. Yeah, that makes me feel MUCH better - feeding dead pets - and I didn't even know it.
- Enough with the hermit crabs already.
- You kind of fixate on things … like dead hermit crabs.
- Somehow it doesn't seem boring to stare at the ceiling for hours.
- The doorbell is ignored because it takes too much energy to get off the couch and who the hell is bothering me right now anyway when I am busy staring at the ceiling!!
- Thank goodness for Lamictal, ECT, and the kabillion other drugs we take all day because there can be a candle in the darkness - our meds are kind of like the flame.
