i live in sacramento where we have been in a locally ordered countywide shut down since midnight on wednesday march 18th. on march 19th, 20th and 22nd i covered the first three stages of shutdown: denial, anger & bargaining (see those posts). none of this is linear, i might go in and out of denial, anger and the rest of the stages throughout the day let alone week or month, especially now. today’s stage is depression.
i’m not a person who likes to admit to ever being in the stage of depression. i remember one time back in the 90s when we first heard about prozac (the first well known antidepressant), i asked my husband “should i be on prozac?” he laughed hysterically, “you on prozac would be terrifying. other people take prozac to be like you.” and it’s true. hyper functioning is the bedrock of my own personal mental difficulties. so i’m going to talk about some of the ways that depression shows up for me.
depression showing up as control. in fact, one of the principle ways in which i can tell that i’m overwhelmed with fear is whenever i am trying to control lots of things that perhaps don’t need to be controlled.
depression showing up as hopelessness. i have experienced this during the shutdown. i start circle the drain and slipping into a sense of oh god, this is going to go on forever and no one will having any money and everyone will get sick and it will be terrible…
depression showing up as pajamas. i have not been getting dressed until like noon because unless i have a videoconference, there doesn’t seem a reason to do so. today i even had 2 videoconferences and stayed in my pajamas but just put my makeup on.
that’s what i’ve got.
