Making Things Worse

I can see how people who’ve never been depressed dismiss it as a figment, because when I’m not depressed, I can actually talk myself out of the idea that I ever was. You just needed to buck up. You were being dramatic. You should’ve gotten more exercise.

But depression is real. It’s real, and it’s not sadness or histrionics or lethargy. It’s an uncontrollable, unrelenting all-of-that, mixed with something else. The only term that comes close is bleakness. A sense that nothing’s working out, nothing will ever work out, why even try?

Events can aggravate it: an internet troll trashes your work; your 92-year-old uncle’s cat gets killed by a coyote, and you realize he can’t get another cat, he was hoping to die before that cat; the touch-screen on the grocery store credit card keypad won’t register your finger’s warmth. You watch the movie About a Boy and, as Toni Collette’s character bursts into tears when she can’t quite reach to put a bowl on a high shelf, you think,

Yes.

Exactly.

But there need not be an event. Circumstances can be perfect. You can be on vacation, walking the dogs on a sunny-but-cool day after eating your home-cooked breakfast at the picnic table on the deck, and it comes. The bleakness. Your cheeks and temples tighten. You have thoughts like, “I’ll never [do X] again because I’ll never be really good at it, so why bother?” Then you beat yourself up for feeling this way on such a perfect sunny-but-cool day. Which makes things worse.

And you can be Sunny Smiles-a-Lot in public. So people never have to know. Which makes things worse because alone? Alone, it’s bad, so you kind of feel like you’re lying all the time.

Three weeks ago, I stopped taking the amino acid supplements I started a year ago. Why? Because I talked myself into thinking maybe I could. Because they cost over two hundred dollars a month. Because I wanted to use that money to get a different car. Within days, I started having depressive episodes.

I had asked my osteopath a long time ago if there were a cheaper brand. He said the ones he sold were the ones he’d found to be of highest quality. But last week, I thought, I’ll try some others. I looked at labels and did some math and got on the internet. I ordered L-tyrosine, L-lysine, 5-HTP, all of them—plus calcium, selenium, all the -iums—for about half of the cost. Still expensive but better. I filled up my

I’m on day 5, and so far I feel no change. I know I need to give it some time, and I’ll go back on the super-expensive ones if the others don’t work. But right now it’s bad, and all I can do is worry it’ll get worse. Which makes things worse.