One of the great joys of depression is the games it plays with you. Let’s personify it for just a moment. Envision it not unlike the oft-portrayed little angel and devil shoulder dwellers, but more forest troll that has nested the wilds of your hair.
Much like our moral advisors, the depression troll speaks with you. Her surprisingly seductive voice adds an adverb here or questions a thought there, but mostly her voice is a sweet, white noise that drowns out everything else that you hear. It’s a subtle strength. She needn’t speak of your incompetence, just make it impossible for you to hear praise.
Others have depicted her ability to filter your vision. Like a tiny little optometrist, she switches lenses before your eyes, only she doesn’t tend to ask politely, “which is better, 1 or 2?” Instead, as you walk along, suddenly everything might take on a scant skew. And much like when you compare lens 1 and lens 2 to your lens 3 and lens 4, it isn’t always clear which is better. In fact, you may not even know that the world warped just ever so slightly more than it had before. Predictably, she adores tints, as well. Some days the tint, blur and astigmatic tilt of the world are hardly perceptible. Other days you are fully aware that you’re peering through fog. What never fails to shock me is when you think it’s as dark and distorted as it can get, and then just like that, she drops in option 5.
Indubitably, she is well-versed in all of the obvious senses. No taste satisfies anymore. You may feed yourself just to see if you can re-discover that savoriness that you could have sworn you remember tasting before. Some people lose their appetite altogether. Not me, the lack of satisfaction just makes me insatiable. She makes a glutton out of me. Aromas lose the ability to mesmerize as they did before. Florals make you sneeze and the scent of spice grows metallic. Touch alludes you. The soft subtle touches that you used to relish because scratchy or unnervingly ticklish. The only thing strong enough to get through to you often borders on pain.
But her aptitude in distortion extends to the ancillary, lesser known senses of hunger, thirst, pain, pressure, void urgency, itchiness, and temperature. For some senses it is an uncomfortable heightening, for others she cloaks the sense so deeply that you feel as if you reside in a void.
Where she really excels, however, is with the less describable senses: a sense of where your body is compared to itself (proprioception), where your body is in the world, where your body is in motion, and your sense of time. She disrupts any synchronicity you might have with the rest of the world. Everything glides by at a stuttering pace. One moment amplifies until you are swimming alone in it. Another set of moments blur by before you have a chance to breathe.
You know you aren’t truly invisible because of the concerned or frustrated looks you receive from others, but you feel as if you aren’t really there, as if whatever you might say or present would slip into the ether without impact.
And honestly, what scares me the most, is you really don’t even care all that much.