Depression in The Time of COVID-19

How does one write about depression during a pandemic? It seems like such an odd topic to write about. Depression? What? Humanity is in crisis! Why aren’t you freaking out? Freak out more, Sonia! Be deeply concerned! Spring into action! Be a helper! Do, do, do!

This is just part of the inner monologue I face every day. It’s an interesting thing, to be depressed while the planet springs into chaos around me. It’s an odd experience to have my internal condition mostly unchanged from how it was before all the chaos began. Because that is what my depression does. It launches me into a kind of fixed state, where the ruminations and deep sorrow are the same regardless of what is going on around me.

I look around me and I see chaos. But inside is the same stagnant turmoil I’ve been feeling for months. I’m not panicking now because I wasn’t panicking then. It’s what others would probably describe as calmness, but for me it’s more like alienation.

There’s a kind of power in this, strangely enough. It means that I’m not prone to extremes of emotion, because I’m mostly just feeling as bad as I’ve always felt for so long. It’s almost as if my depression was made for chaos in some ways. There is some evidence that folks who suffer from depression actually have a more realistic view of the world. This can be a curse during more stable times, but during times of great upheaval it’s an asset.

There’s also a strange sort of comfort in knowing that my depression is finally “justified.” No longer must I self-flagellate because I “shouldn’t” feel depressed (What is there to be depressed about, Sonia? Why can’t you just be normal like everyone else?). Knowing that I have this permission makes me incredibly useful in some ways. In an emergency situation, if something needs doing, I’ll get it done quickly and efficiently. But if not, then I can easily tuck away into my introversion and be just as still as I was before. Out of the way. I am the eye in a storm.

My depression has always made me a keen observer of the world around me (or perhaps my observations of the world around me have made me depressed, or both). I find I’m able to detach myself from the current chaos enough to see what is really happening. What really matters. Which ideas and behaviors are most beneficial during a crisis, and which are most harmful. There is an odd sort of clarity.

Ultimately depression feels like less of an enemy at times like this. Its constancy provides a strange reassurance and comfort during a time when nothing is constant, when everything is uncomfortable. It’s a thing I know, my stubborn companion. But it’s fierce, and when others are panicking, it lends me a kind of solidity I didn’t realize I had.