I left the Recurse Center & Brooklyn 30 days ago and can finally begin to unpack. It's been over two months since my last post and the truth is...
I got depressed
One day in early November, I lost my fizz and my soul-soda went flat. For about two months, I struggled to:
- Wake up. Some days I laid in bed until I got too bored and hungry. I strongly preferred not to be awake.
- Imagine the future. A fog covered my brain when thinking about the next week and beyond. I was disinterested at best, hopeless at worst.
- Empathize with others. I felt trapped in my own head and couldn't sense what others were feeling. I got lonely because of it.
Sometimes it be like that. Not my first rodeo with depression, but this was the first time I felt it without an obvious reason like the death of a family member, covid, a breakup, etc. which made it harder to identify and name. I was still working out, writing code, socializing, and technically functional, but dissociated.
With enough hindsight, I think it may have been a combination of all the factors below hitting all at once:
- Long distance relationships are hard. I was missing the regular love and physical connection I have when I'm home.
- My really exciting and important project, Charlie, was falling flat on it's face. I worked on it day and night for months and it wasn’t working as expected. Expectations hit reality and I felt deflated for putting so much time and energy into it for so little payoff.
- I got less sunlight; Daylight Savings Time and Seasonal Affective Disorder go hand in hand.
- I was coming to the end of my sabbatical and would have to re-enter the job market soon.
- Saying farewell to the Recurse Center and all my friends. Goodbyes during the holidays are much heavier.
- I wasn't isolated from all the news of happenings across the US, all the headlines hit me too.
Back to baseline
Now that I'm home with my loved ones, I've got more headroom to rise & fall without going under. I still feel the weight of all the above; but now I can carry it, and most importantly, want to carry it. As I'm writing this in a private notepad, I'm feeling resistance to posting it because there's a good chance my struggles seem downright pedantic compared to yours. But the world I want to live in includes people being honest about where they're at and where they've been.
I got depressed, now I'm feeling better.
How are you doing?