I cried at my desk at the office today. Twice. Crying in a cubicle is a tricky feat because someone is usually on the other side of the flimsy wall. No matter how hard I try to cry silently, it’s inevitable for one large intake of breath to escape, or a gulp, or some other distressing sound that will cause one of my cubicle mates to say, “Hey — you okay over there?”
When someone asks you if you are okay, it’s not always an opportune time to get into the specifics of why you’re not okay. Sometimes it’s easier just to brush it off, even though the other person won’t be entirely fooled. I wait for a beat, inhale slowly, and answer in the smoothest voice I can muster, “Yes, I’m fine!” The trick is to shape your mouth in a smile to make your vocal inflection more convincing. Luckily the person on the other side of the cubicle can’t see that I’m smiling only with my mouth, and not my eyes.
Considering that I’ve battled depression my entire adult life (tip of the hat to Prozac, huzzah!), and I’m currently in the throes of perimenopause, I’m really not fine. From one moment to the next, I’m a heap of violently shifting hormonal mood swings with a dash of headaches, sudden hot flashes, and lightly misted with a layer of cold night sweats. But hey, I share this with you because I know I’m not the only one. I want others to know they’re not the only ones, either.
The advantage of age, however, is that now I have a backlog of history: previous crying fits and days where I could not get out of bed. I remember some tough days in my teens and 20s when I felt alone and hopeless. By my 30s, balancing depression with raising kids, compounded by postpartum depression, brought its own unique brand of heartache. By my 40s, I had done enough work on myself to know how to at least recognize the signs of an approaching “dark cloud,” even though I could only occasionally ward it off of my own volition. Now, in my 50s, I’ve accepted that some days I’ll be weeping in my cubicle for no obvious reason. The crying is the same, but the perspective has shifted. Now I know how to tell myself, “Tomorrow will be better.”
Somebody told me that tomorrow would be better years ago, but I was too young and inexperienced to believe it. I know there are motivational quotes and memes that exclaim, “Live in the moment!” but when you’re depressed, there has to be more than the present moment. Over time, I’ve slowly assembled a small trusted circle of cheerleaders, myself included, to remind me that even when things are feeling pretty dire, it’s only temporary. Once you’ve experienced inexplicable feelings of sadness and despair enough times, the message finally breaks through: Tomorrow really will be better. It might only be a little bit better because you slept, or because the sun came out, or because the smell of toast and coffee in the kitchen reminds you of your grandparent’s cottage on the lake, but somehow, things get better tomorrow.
The other important lesson is this: it’s not necessary to pinpoint what’s wrong. Sometimes there isn’t really a clear reason. The sadness just is. The sadness exists as its own entity, and takes over the normal operations of your brain for a little bit.
I remember being on the beach when I was about 13. I looked up and realized that I had waded into the water a little too far. My family was far off on the shore. To them, I probably appeared as a tiny bobblehead between the waves. This is depression. Depression and sadness is deep water. If you panic, or fight the waves, you will be beaten and battered both by the whitecaps and the undertow. Trying to control depression is as fruitless as trying to control the tides. But, if you wait a beat, steady your breathing, and allow the air in your lungs to propel you to the surface, you will end up floating on your back, looking up at the sky that you hadn’t noticed until now. From there, with a little bit of luck or faith or whatever you throw at it, you will keep your eyes on the clouds and slowly float on the waves, closer and closer to the shore.
