The Depression Logs
Author’s Note: I wrote this post back in January when I was deep in my seasonal depression. I was going through a breakup then and the effects of an extended pandemic did not aid the situation. I hadn’t had the courage to post this at the time (and my perfectionism held me back from the open vulnerability), but as I go through another wave of depression, I find myself revisiting this post as if I wrote a How-To guide for my future self. Looking at this now reminds me that I am my own healer — my past, present, and future selves are all looking out for each other.
Depression is, well, a bitch.
There’s simply no other way to put it. And yet so many of us struggle with it (264 million people, globally), waging wars in the pits of our clouded minds on a daily basis until one day the sky becomes clearer and maybe, more manageable, but even then, it is never really the end. This year especially has not been particularly conducive to us depressively-prone minded. From a pandemic that dramatically shifted so many aspects of our lives to a social justice movement that rocked the world, quite literally, to one of the most important elections in history that may have well ended in half the nation leaving the country (and those are just to name the big few), it was close to impossible to have maintained mental and emotional stability through it all.
I am no stranger to depression, especially seasonal affective disorder. I know that as the winter season rolls around, my body is preparing for darker months ahead as my energy slowly stores itself way into hibernation and my mind becomes bleaker than the gloomy, flat winter skies. And while I know how this is all about to go down—what the signals are and how I’ll be for the next couple of months—it doesn’t make the annual experience any easier to get through.
One year, I thought I could make it a little experiment for myself by changing up the ways I let myself “deal” with the depression every time it came around. It started that year when I decided that instead of treating it like an unwanted guest in my own home and fighting against it everyday as if it was a separate entity—which was extremely and emotionally exhausting—I was going to lean into the depression instead. It helped me begin this newfound journey of accepting it as part of who I am rather than pushing away that side of me, and ultimately, learning to love my entire self; a daily practice I still strive for to this day.
This year, I decided to log my depression days with the hope that maybe I can find a a crack of light one day at a time as I get through one minute at a time. Maybe it’s because I’m analytically driven and have this need to find answers and patterns. Or maybe it’s because it gives purpose to my days by logging in every moment as if it were the most important thing to do at that exact time (I’m sure there’s a science to that thinking). Whatever the hidden motivation, it’s the fact that I found some bit of reasoning, and when you’re deep in the ugly chest of the darkness, that’s more than enough to ask from your body. After all, seeing depression as part of your presence is learning to love yourself through the darkness.
Follow along my first week of depression on a day by day log. Most of it isn’t much and yet, each day brought me something new that I needed.
“Depression, we hear, is both a spiritual and physical experience. Things happen in our bodies when we are depressed: sleeplessness, fear, lack of concentration. Things happen in the spirit, too: it can feel like breath is shallow. Dispirited, it seems, might be a word that’d describe this experience. It can feel, at its worst, like the opposite of breath, like your spirit is being suffocated.”
Monday, Jan. 4th
8:00am My alarm goes off but I can’t get out of my bed. My body is numb. I know I have therapy in an hour but I can’t get the energy to move.
8:15am I text my therapist saying I have to reschedule for a later time, my mind and body just won’t wake up. I go back to sleep, phasing in and out, but mostly forcing myself to sleep.
11:00am I finally get out of bed. I think I washed my face and brushed my teeth, but I honestly can’t remember. I attempt to start work but I have no energy. I finish one task and I’m already exhausted.
12:00pm I go back to bed, take a nap, and try to shut out the world.
3:00pm I force myself to eat. I’m not even hungry but it’s the first taste of food I’ve had all day except it doesn’t taste like anything.
4:00pm I call my friend. She stays on the phone with me and I just cry and tell her what’s going on. We talk about depression, we talk about how to focus my energy somewhere, we talk about how I can work on achieving my goals—something that usually gets me excited and motivated.
6:00pm I work out for the first time in weeks. I figured moving my body is a good way to escape the funk for a bit.
7:00pm I eat a little while watching some TV and bullet journaling to focus my mind on some goal-setting and affirmations.
8:00pm I call the same friend back and she stays on the phone with me until I’m ready to go to bed at 10:00pm
Today’s takeaways: Day 1 is always the hardest. It’s okay for me to just sleep all day if that’s what I need because depression is an extreme misalignment of mind, body, and soul. The constant waves of feelings overwhelmed is enough to sink you into dire exhaustion. But I’m grateful for supportive friends who understand what this is like, whether they themselves have been through it or if they know me enough to know this happens.
Tuesday, Jan. 5th
7:00am Alarm goes off. I hit snooze 3-4 times
9:00am I’m still in bed, hitting snooze on the multiple alarms I had set, hoping it would be aggressive enough for me to get up. But I just lay there, phasing in-and-out of sleep. The dreams are vivid, mostly of a life I no longer have and for the most part, I’m okay with that if it means my awakened self exists somewhere else in my life.
9:30am I cry. A lot. The tears won’t stop pouring out and my chest feels heavy but my mind feels empty. Then where are the tears coming from? It’s like I carry stagnant rivers in my body until one day they run and run with no end but it’s not washing away the numbness.
10:00am I sit up, realizing I have therapy in one hour. But also realizing that that’s another hour to sit with these depressive feelings. I text some close friends. I text my sister. I’m desperately reaching out so I don’t sink again.
10:20am I finally brush my teeth and wash my face. I put on contacts. I go back to bed, this time sitting on top of my just-made bed. I cry some more, this time it really hurts. I look up as if there’s some spiritual being that can pick me up from the pain. I get some text responses back, and they’re all words of consolation and support, but no one is immediately available to talk. I turn to my book corner and see the book “The Tao of Now” at the top. It’s new and I haven’t read it before, but it seems like it’ll provide some answer to this pain. Anything really.
10:50am I read through the first couple of pages. They seem to offer some bit of understanding. The author shares his experience with distractions in his head and his quest towards finding peace. Okay, maybe this is a good place to start; at least I’ve stopped crying.
11:00am Finally therapy. Another hour of crying and dumping all my thoughts and rambling to my therapist. She listens with full intent. She’s seen me like this before; she reassures me that this is what I go through every year during this time (aka seasonal affective disorder); she tells me I’ve grown so much every year I come out of this depressive phase so I will come out of this again. Everything is temporary. This feeling is temporary.
12:00pm I tell my boss I’m taking a sick day, understanding that my mental wellbeing is important right now. I call back one of my friends since she called me during my session. I cry some more to her and she listens. She understands depression so well since she recently went through the same so she empathizes with me. I feel seen and heard and grateful for close friends who understand. She encourages me to take a walk outside, buy a coffee, sit in the park, or at least make the plan to do so, which is enough.
12:36pm I decide I should feed myself today so I get up from bed, get dressed, and walk outside to grab coffee and some lunch.
1:00pm A surprise virtual hang with a friend who reached out (without even knowing what I’m going through). We catch up and have lunch together, I tell her about my mental & emotional struggle. What a nice social interaction that I really needed in that moment.
2:15pm I catch up with some work things but mostly spending my time reading, writing, updating my blog—things that could spark some joy, or at least a feeling. I noticed my natural hair in the mirror and thought, “wow, even at my lowest, my hair is doing well.” I feel a crack of a smile inside as I think this.
5:00pm I ask a friend to keep me company on the phone while we do work alongside.
6:00pm I work out again—possibly my only form of physical activity so I should probably be consistent with dedicating 45 minutes each day.
6:45pm I shower. Finally. I cry some more—the pain comes back and the emptiness is deep. I light some candles hoping some bit of aromatherapy will soothe my soul a little.
7:15pm I eat my lunch leftovers. There’s not much left but the only appetite I have. I phone call another friend (that’s 4 friends today!) to keep me company.
9:35pm I go down a rabbit hole of articles and stories to connect with others who have experienced self-loathing, too (like this article on The Cut, ‘Everything I Do Fails, So I Don’t Even Try’ or ‘I Feel Ashamed of Almost Everything’)
10:00pm No more friends to chat with, and the loneliness overwhelms me. Maybe I should ween off relying on people too much to pick me back up. I do some reading and go to bed early to end the day. That’s all I have energy for to exist today.
Today’s takeaways: Reach out to your closest friends. They will be there no matter what, especially when you tell them you’re going through a tough time. Admitting that you’re struggling with depression will uncover deeper connections to the people closest to you and help you feel less alone. Isolation breeds on depression and I’ve learned in the past that isolating myself has only been more dangerous than helpful.
Wednesday, Jan. 6th
6:00am My body naturally wakes up and my immediate thoughts are how alone I feel and how much I hate it. I don’t want to be awake if I don’t have to. I don’t want to add extra hours to my day that I have to get through. I go back to sleep.
9:00am I wake up again but I’m not ready to get out of bed. I toss and turn and cry.
10:00am I have to get up, I have a meeting in an hour. I brush my teeth, wash my face, go to my work area (today I’ve decided to sit on the ground and work from the coffee table. Something about sitting on the floor makes it easier). I can’t start work yet so I decide to journal; half a page in and I cry again. This is too damn hard. I am not okay, I tell myself.
12:00pm Finished my meeting and now back to work. A friend texts me to remind me to get coffee and get a bagel to feed myself. I oblige—at least it’s sunny today. It’s funny how your favorite— everything bagel with veggie cream cheese—can have no taste when you’re depressed. I Facetime my friend to keep me company so we can work alongside each other. I get a text from my stepsister and learn that she’s also going through a hard time—I assure her we can get through this together.
4:30pm I decide to stop working. Good thing most of my day was comprised of back-to-back meetings, which interestingly enough, was nice to be “around” people even if it was mostly more work I have to get done. I try to take a nap before my friend comes to scoop me up to get me out of the house.
5:00pm - 9:00pm My friend and I go to a nearby beer hall, still decked out with leftover Christmas lights hanging from the ceilings and TV’s blaring either the news or sports games all across the walls. It’s nice to be around humanity for a bit, even pretend to be engrossed in basketball games just to gain some semblance of activating my curiosity again. We chat, we catch up, we laugh, we dance in our seats, we drink, I cry to her, we drink some more, we order fries (which was definitely enough to feed 4 people). The music was hitting the right 90s R&B vibes and made me miss going out and dancing and feeling so good about myself. I need to find a way to bring something similar back—I remember that’s when I feel the best. I text an old friend to see how she’s doing because I’m learning that leaning onto friends who have been there for me is really helpful. And maybe this is a time to deepen my friendships even more.
10:00pm I get back home and decide I want to watch a sappy love movie. It’s the only thing I enjoy watching by myself where my overly-romantic feels can completely lay out and breathe. I watch Sylvie’s Love and wow, it was beautiful, especially for the old jazz soundtrack. That kind of music makes me yearn for that old-fashioned kind of love when it was worth fighting for and two people always found their way back to each other. Did I mention I really love jazz?
12:30am The movie’s over but I still want to revel in the feelings that it brought out in me. So I put my Airpods on, play the soundtrack and just stare at the ceiling. I close my eyes and pretend I’m part of that era, in all its 20s retro outfits and prim-and-proper updos. Then I read my book to lull me to sleep.
1:30am I’ve been tossing and turning with too many anxious thoughts in my head. The thoughts take over and I can feel my body turn into a panic. I fight so hard to utilize all self-relying techniques, I can almost hear myself fight with my thoughts inside my head to prevent from downspiraling. I call my sister for help. I need a real voice to quiet these voices.
Today’s takeaways: Remembering myself of the things I love, such as jazz or 90s R&B music, makes me realize I am still a unique person with specific favorites and particular tastes. I am definitively and defiantly me, and that can never be taken away. Right now, I just need to find my way back to that self again.
Thursday, Jan. 7th
8:00am Here comes my body naturally waking up again. I just want to stay in my dreams if it means I can pretend my life doesn’t feel so hard right now. Even if the dreams are nonsense, at least I have people with me. I force myself back to sleep.
10:30am A text wakes me up. I look at the time and decide it’s still too early to start my day. I read the news (bad idea) and can’t stop scrolling across headlines about pro-Trump supporters/entitled white supremacists storming the Capitol. Now I’m channeling my energy with rage. Am I surprised? No. Does this bring up earlier events within the past year that brings up other kinds of rage? Yes. So my reality is shit and the country’s reality is worse. All I can do is laugh.
11:15am Okay, I guess I’ll get up now. I am looking forward to my daily matcha latte, though (which I’m still dismissing as a temporary morning medicine worth the $6.40 expense everyday).
12:00pm I Facetime another friend to keep me company while I work. Thank god for friends. Actually, thank my past self for creating such fulfilling friendships to help get me through these times.
2:30pm I attempt to cook something today. I know I don’t have much energy other than a quick 10-minute meal. I crave congee since it’s a classic Asian comfort food. No recipe, just winging it since it seemed easy enough. 15 minutes in and it’s still not done…turns out it takes an hour to simmer?! Well, that was a fail. That was all the energy I had to make anything so I’ll just drink the rest of my matcha latte.
3:00pm I decide to take an hour break from work and go sit in the park. I bring my journal with me. I find a nice table soaked in the deliciously warm light of a winter afternoon sun. As I begin writing in my journal, I see an elderly woman come towards the other side of the table and she asks if she can sit on that side and share the table with me. She tells me it’s her favorite spot in the park because of the way the sun hits. I smile and say of course. I ask her if she comes here everyday (hoping she does so I have a silent partner to keep me company), and she says as much as she can through the week. It made my heart melt, and reminded me of the last time I felt connected to a stranger during one my depression periods. Sometimes, the universe has its magical ways of consoling you through these little angels. After a full page of journaling with my Airpods in blasting last night’s movie’s jazz music, I hear an unusual sound. I look up and I see a man sitting on a bench luring squirrels in by feeding them nuts and as soon as the squirrels climb up his leg to grab, he snaps a photo of them with this old digital camera (remember those?). On the other corner of my eye, I hear a child wailing and see his mom carrying him horizontally like she’s carrying logs. I laugh. Is this what it means to be “in the moment”? To notice these little vignettes of life around and think that things will be okay after all as long as I look up?
4:30pm I get back to work, but barely do much. I decide to take a nap while playing more jazz to soothe me to sleep—something about someone else’s voice keeps me company, especially after the sun has set and the darkness takes over (both literally and figuratively).
5:30pm I get ready for our virtual team happy hour. Maybe just some light conversation and small talk will bring me back to myself, slowly.
7:00pm The happy hour revitalized me. I could feel myself be a person again who can exist amongst others and feel good about herself afterwards. I can carry conversation, I can make jokes, I can make it all be natural. I refresh myself to meet a girlfriend for dinner nearby.
7:45pm - 10:00pm My friend and I talk for hours, catching up but mostly getting into long and intellectual discussions about politics, about books, about philosophies, about intersectional issues, about how we can contribute to a greater world. I talk with such ease, I talk with passion and diction, I talk with an eloquence that even surprised myself mid-conversation. I remember that these are the kinds of conversations that remind me I am a woman of my own wisdom and wit. I am a woman of knowledge and I have things to say. All the bits of information I’ve collected have made me a valuable resource of strength. I realize that I am not the same person I was during my last depression. Then, my friend surprises me by covering the bill.
10:30pm I read until my eyes lull themselves to sleep.
Today’s takeaways: Finding my way back to myself is recognizing the little moments of magic that remind me how moved I can be by the things that make me feel the slightest of joys. They can be the most ordinary and mundane, like watching strangers in the park, but they’re enough to dissociate me from my clouded mind and feel connected to the world around me. When your mind is somewhere darker, your body can still feel joy in the everyday.
Friday, Jan 8th
8:30am Woke up early again but didn’t want to start the day so I idled around in bed, either phasing in and out of sleep or just crying.
10:30 Finally get up to get ready. Grabbed my usual matcha latte and packed to work from my friend’s apartment so I’m not alone.
12:00pm I go to my friend’s place to do work with her until happy hour later when we meet up with our other coworkers.
2:00pm My stepsister calls me. It surprises me because we don’t usually talk as often but I also know we’re both going through a lot mentally and emotionally so I knew she needed me, and I her. We share everything about what we’re feeling, how hard it’s been, the struggles of dealing with anxiety and depression. I had no idea she went through the same thing and has been for some time, and to be able to connect with her this way really brought us closer. We’re a lot more alike than I thought. In the past, I just assumed we weren’t as close because we were so different but now I can see we’ve been going through the same internal challenges, and it’s so nice to be able to unveil this deeper connection with her.
3:30pm My friends and I head over to grab happy hour drinks in Brooklyn and stay there for hours, talking, catching up, getting rowdy, complaining about work, etc. I’m so happy to have made long-lasting friendships despite the fact that we no longer see each other as often as we would if we were still in the office.
9:00pm - 2:00am We get late night grub and go back to my friend’s apartment to just chill, drink some more, and talk about everything from books we’re reading, music artists we love, debating on so many various topics and challenging each other’s thinking. We watch some old music videos and get excited about revisiting the artists we grew up on. This goes on for hours but I don’t even realize because I’m just having so much fun. I love talking about music and I love people who do, too. I finally head home with my friend and sleep with much more ease than I did throughout the week.
Today’s takeaways: I am not as lost as I think I am, or as I used to be. I have the most amazing friends in my corner who will either check in with me and my mood, take me out to remind me of the little joys, or listen to me so that I have space and liberty to air out the things that are eating me inside. I am never alone and opening up to my people have made me closer to them. I’ve grown so much since my last depression.
Saturday, Jan 9th
9:00am I wake up and do my usual morning routine, which of course, includes my morning matcha latte.
2:00pm - 6:00pm I go to my cousin’s apartment in Brooklyn just to catch up and to get out of the house. I update her on everything that’s been going on. I don’t typically tell her much mostly because we didn’t see each other/hang out as often for me to dump all my problems onto her. But we have gotten closer in the past couple of months, and I think I just needed the closest thing I have to family here nearby. She makes me lunch and bakes me a snack. She shows me her new favorite hobby and I get so excited learning about it that it revitalizes my own creative energy. I start ideating ways I can help her propel her project.
7:00pm I’m not looking forward to heading home and spending the entire Saturday night by myself. The idea of having so many hours alone to be with my thoughts makes me so worried that I start crying on the train ride home. I text a close friend telling her how scared I am. She reassures me that I can keep myself “company” by playing some background noise on the TV. Meanwhile, I get a text from my cousin to check my email. She had sent me $25 credit on Seamless to order some dinner. She remembered that I said I wasn’t feeding myself much because I hadn’t had any energy to cook or even eat so she wanted to make sure I had something to eat for the night.
8:00pm - 11:30pm I catch up on The Mandalorian episodes (wow, I really do love the Star Wars universe) as I fill up my bullet journal, something I’ve recently gotten back into but want to continue with. Surprisingly, I have an enjoyable night in with myself—ordering Indian food, watching TV, and getting crafty with my bullet journal. I’m beginning to feel okay being on my own again.
Today’s takeaways: Being afraid of being alone is the anxiety and depression telling me I have something to fear when in actuality, being alone does not necessarily mean that I am alone in life. There is a clear distinction between perfect solitude and heavy isolation. One is about nourishing the time you spend with yourself and one is about cornering yourself into the darkness even further, which no human is meant to survive.
Sunday, Jan 10th
8:30am I actually get out of bed this time (though I was awake an hour earlier), the first time all week that I got up before 11:00am. But it’s really because I’m meeting a friend for morning coffee and ask her for help on job hunting and any potential prospects at her company.
11:00am My conversation with her gets me really excited and hopeful for my career path. I have a new surge of confidence in my past work (I can’t believe I didn’t myself more credit??) and I immediately get to work with building a website portfolio to highlight all that I’ve done.
1:00pm After a couple hours of being in the productivity zone and searching through all my past work to pull for the website, I decide to tend to another long-overdue task on my to-do list: taking photos of clothes to sell on Poshmark and Depop. I had been meaning to do this for so long and was always too busy to do so, but with my depression, I didn’t have energy to schedule myself as I usually do so it actually opened up my days. This is kind of a silver lining? Maybe this is meant to show me that I should only tend to the energy I have at the moment rather than exhausting myself as if I’m running on 100% everyday.
3:00pm I’m tired and take a little break. I feel good that I got to do some things for myself and my future. The confidence and productivity boosts really made me feel like myself, and for those brief moments, I found the crack of hope that I was waiting for at the end of this dark tunnel.
5:00pm I head over to my friend’s place to stay over for a bit to avoid being alone. I’m realizing that just having these minor plans gives me something to look forward to, especially to just get me out of the house. A little bit at a time to break up the day.
6:00pm Had a girls night with my friend. It’s just nice to be in the company of someone else, and someone to take care of you when you can’t take care of yourself right now. We wallow in our feelings, we do some drinking, we binge on some snacks, we watch feel-sy movies. And while it’s not a cure all, it’s a cure for this moment. When I asked her how she goes through these lows, she tells me, “One day at a time.”
Today’s takeaways: Day by day. A little at a time. We’ll be alright.
No matter who we are and where we come from, pain is universal. The depth, the breadth, and the capacity may vary, but the pain is still distinct and overwhelming. The best we can do for each other is to recognize that no one has it easy and we all need support. Annotating my week like this as I go through the waves of my emotions has helped me grasp onto some clarity and simple purpose of my daily living.
When you are dissociated from your mind, your body is asking for care. It’s asking for help, and sometimes that means coming back to our basic human instincts of being in the presence of community to be looked after and cared for. This week has shown me the vast communities I’ve created for myself in the span of my lifetime, through the hardships and struggles. The friends and family I have in my corner—even when my corner gets dark and lonely—are evidence that I’ve built an amazing life for myself to have this amazing support system help me get through these rough patches.
I hope this has provided some perspective for others who are also going through the same thing. This year has not been easy and we must allow ourselves the grace to acknowledge that things that are out of our control can still create great impact in our lives, and it’s okay. We are doing the best we can under the circumstances we’re given. And trusting that our internal growth is a promising foundation for always getting better, day by day.
