This is Depression.

One of the most comforting and yet terrifying things in life is that it keeps going. You can set a goal, work to achieve something, but the end of the day is just going to bring on a new day. I’m not sure about other people’s experiences with depression, but part of mine has been setting a goal and hoping that achieving that goal will make me happy. That I’m not happy because I haven’t gotten what I wanted yet. I’m not there yet, and that’s why I still feel empty.

The different stages of my life so far have been working towards different objectives. They’ve been more or less struggling through the hurdles that life keeps throwing my way. And every day is a challenge, and every day I wonder if it’s going to end, if one day I’ll be given some happiness or I’ll have earned the ability to be satisfied and smile, but that’s not the way it works. And those days it feels like I’ll never get what I want, that the promotion is always out of reach or that friend group will just never accept me, and I’ll never make an entire week of being able to get out of bed . But then it happens — I’m given the things that I’ve always told myself will make me happy and I’m ecstatic and excited and then…nothing. There’s still the day after that.

Maybe the anxiety kicks in. Maybe the thoughts that I don’t deserve this, that it’s a fluke, flutter in and take over. Or that it’s not what I had hoped it would be. That I’m still bored, that I don’t belong, that I suck at everything, that I’m still alone.

And yet, I find that even without the anxiety of dreading the worst possible outcomes, I still feel empty. So maybe this is depression: Searching for a win makes me feel as though the world is not just indifferent, but also against me and that I have to swim against the current to find some sort of land. I’m in the middle of the ocean, and everything hurts, and I can’t see anyone or anything, and I can’t possibly hope for an end without one being in sight. But the thing is — with my mindset, even once I find that land, it’s hard to believe it exists. It’s hard to appreciate it, and I find that even though I’m standing, I still feel as though I’m struggling to stay afloat. And maybe it’ll be easier to just drift away again.