Today I’ve decided to focus on the question of “What if depression isn’t what I’ve been told it is?”

The thing about depression is that there are many different forms of it, and I tend to find that when I tell people I have depression they think a few different things. I find people think one or two things: The first being that I’m suicidal, and the second being that I just want attention. Now, neither of these things happen to be particularly true in my case.

My depression looks entirely different. Most of the time I function in a state I refer to as “I am” which basically means I’m neither happy nor sad, I simply just exist and that’s how I feel. This is a very hard feeling to describe to anyone who’s never felt it—it’s as if someone pulled out my insides, I feel hollow and empty. That’s my base state of being, I have no internal joy or sorrow in general. That’s not to say I’m not capable of being happy or sad, I’m happy a lot and I’m sad a lot. When I’m happy I’m giggly, smiley, and I make a lot of really bad puns. When I’m sad I don’t get suicidal, I just simply wish the Earth would swallow me up or that I could just cease to exist. This doesn’t mean I’m going to go seek out to try and end my existence, just that I wish some mystical force would stop it for me.

The thing about being in a constant state of “I am” is that I care about everything all too much and not enough all at the same time. I will over analyze and worry about everything, but at the same time I could care less about what’s going on around me. When I disappoint or upset people I tend to get so mad at myself I can’t think straight, sometimes causing me to self-harm. It’s not the best response to thinking I’ve disappointed people, and I’m working on it, but that’s how I “fix” that I’ve been a “bad person.” At the same time that I’ve upset these people I could care less about what they’re feeling.

This storm of too much and not enough inside me is slowly driving me insane.

The thing is, my depression is anxiety driven. My therapist and I have done a lot of work, and since the two, for me, work so closely my therapist thinks that if we fix the anxiety we fix depression. Fixing my depression is something odd to think about, because that means that instead of a state of “I am” I will have internal joy. That’s not to say I’m not a happy person right now, I’m happy in plenty of moments, but I lack joy in the core of my being.

This balance of things going on within me is odd, and my depression certainly isn’t what the media makes depression out to be. But that doesn’t make my feelings any less valid. Instead it makes my battle uniquely my own.