Depression doesn’t always arrive like a storm. Sometimes it slips in quietly, dulling everything it touches. The things that used to bring me joy – laughter with friends, coffee, a good conversation – drift out of reach. Colors wash away. The world shrinks into a small, cold corner where it’s hard to breathe.
It feels like a lifetime’s weight pressing me down into that darkness. I wake up heavy with years I didn’t ask to carry; every small hope becomes harder to lift. I feel alone and isolated, watching my life through glass. Friendships that once gathered now feel permanently distant. Family conversations thin into echoes. Simple pleasures scramble into things I can’t recognize. And there’s a voice that settles in: you are unworthy, insignificant, worthless. That voice is loud and mean and, in the silence, it feels like the only truth.
That loss doesn’t just hurt me. It hurts the people who love me, too. They watch helplessly from the outside, wanting to help but not knowing how. Their eyes ask questions they can’t answer, and I feel the weight of their worry alongside my own. Guilt spreads on both sides: I feel it for not being able to “just try harder,” and they feel it for not being able to make it stop.
Too often, depression is misunderstood as a choice, as if I could simply wish it away and rejoin the world. If only it were that easy. The truth is, depression is not weakness, laziness, or a moral failing. It’s an illness that isolates, confuses, and holds tight.
But here’s what matters: feeling powerless does not make me powerless. Speaking it, naming it, asking for patience – that is its own kind of strength. Depression hurts. It steals parts of me and makes me feel small. But I am still here. I am still reaching. I am still worth the light I hope will find me again.
Keep telling the story,
Professor Peacock
The Magical Storybook of Professor Peacock 