⟫⟫⟫ Before you read:
this is not me Debby Downer-ing all over the place. This is just me being a real person with a little depression problem and the nerve to say it out loud. I’m doing better now— writing about it is usually part of how I get there. 🫶🏻
(I wrote this Saturday 4/25)
I’m coming off a near three-day depression sleep binge.
I couldn’t tell you how many hours of sleep I’ve had. I just know it’s been a lot.
I knew it was coming before it fully hit. I could feel it in the way I started staying in bed instead of getting up to make sure my kids were actually awake and walking out the door on time.
It went from setting my alarm early enough to make sure they were up, to calling their phones from my bed to make sure they were up, to eventually just trusting they had set their own alarms and would get themselves out the door.
Worst case scenario, they’d miss their ride or the bus and I’d have to take them.
The good news is they’ve actually done great. I’m really proud of them for that.
But I started realizing the depression sleep was incoming when I stopped waking up until way into the afternoon. I’d wake up a couple of times, never even looking at the clock, then close my eyes and go right back to sleep because I didn’t care what time it was.
If there wasn’t an appointment for me or one of my kids, if there wasn’t something I absolutely had to do, I was staying in bed.
The first couple of times, it was like, oh shit.
I didn’t mean to sleep that long.
Then it turned into going to bed already knowing that was exactly what I was going to do.
These last few days were bad.
The thing is, I don’t actually like sleeping the day away.
I don’t like wasting hours because I do think time is precious.
But sometimes I need to get away and shut myself off because I cannot possibly cope. That sounds dramatic, but there’s not really anywhere else for me to go to get away because… responsibility.
I’ll do what I have to do, even in peak depression mode, but it drains the living fuck out of me.
I’ve always been a fan of sleep, but then there was a stretch where I found myself again— actually— found myself for the first time. Ever. I figured out that I had likes and interests, and for a while I was on fire with wanting to do all of them.
Back then I barely slept.
Sometimes I got an hour a night.
Sometimes I’d nap when the kid I watch napped and get maybe four hours total.
I never really went to sleep in the same day.
If we didn’t have plans or extracurriculars on the weekend, then sure, maybe I’d sleep most of Saturday or Sunday away.
But that felt like catching up on sleep.
This doesn’t feel like that.
Lately, I can’t find the drive I had for the things I only recently discovered I loved. That part honestly breaks my heart the most.
Before, depression didn’t feel like losing desire to do things because I didn’t really have anything that felt like mine. It just felt like a heavier-than-normal bleh.
But now I know what it feels like to actually want to do something and still not be able to reach for it because depression is sitting on you like a fucking elephant
I hate that.
Not that I’d rather go back to having nothing for myself. But I really, really hate what this feels like.
Usually I don’t fight the depression sleep.
Most of the time, if I’m being honest, I actually do feel better after a good depression sleep. Just… not lately.
And that scares the shit out of me.
Because why is it hanging around this time?
Depression sleep is weird.
Yesterday I forced myself out of bed to shower. I felt exhausted, and I had already slept so many hours it should’ve been medically offensive. I felt more tired right then, after waking up and showering, than I did before I went to bed.
I dragged myself through the shower, half-assed my after-shower routine, and then crawled right back into bed.
The funny thing about the sleep that comes after depression sleep— but is also still depression sleep— is that’s when it gets cozy.
That’s when my bed feels like a friend welcoming me back with open arms. I have a Sleep Number bed, and it adjusts to my preferred setting when I get in, so it kind of is like a hug.
Like, let me wrap around your body the way you need. At that point it doesn’t feel like I’m going there to hide.
It feels like I’m so tired from the depression sleep that now I need real sleep.
…or something like that.
So that sleep feels comforting and peaceful.
I drift off softly instead of heavily.
But the bitch of that is that the depression sleep is clearly not over.
Proof of that is how I slept an ungodly amount of additional hours after that.
There is no way a body should be able to do that. But mine does.
Then when I do finally get up and move out of my room and exist among the other people in my household, I am not at ease.
I’m on alert. High-strung. I need to move slowly.
Probably because I haven’t taken my meds in well over twenty-four hours because…
I was asleep.
That wake-up after the depression sleep—then the shower, then the cozy-extra sleep, then more depression sleep— leaves me feeling almost delirious.
Disassociated.
It happens almost every time I do a big depression sleep, and you’d think I’d drag myself out of bed just long enough to take my meds, even if it meant climbing right back into bed after.
But I don’t.
So then I wake up.
Eat because I haven’t eaten.
Refill the water bottle because apparently carrying one around isn’t enough to keep me from becoming a raisin.
Take my meds…
And guess what? I feel like shit.
And then I feel tired again. Not depression tired this time. The kind where I need a nap.
That is such a weird part of it—having to sleep off the tiredness that comes from too much sleep.
But it works like that every time. It’s a pattern. I know exactly what will happen like the back of my hand.
Today I got sick of feeling so blah and down and stuck in my head, so after I ate and took my meds and drank some water, I decided I needed sunshine.
I literally stripped down to my sports bra and panties, laid a blanket out in the yard, and went outside to lay in the sun.
Don’t worry. We have a fence.
It felt good.
I listened to the birds. One of them sounded like something from a video game and I still have no idea what it was.
The neighbor was mowing but thankfully he was almost done, so I didn’t have to be annoyed by that for too long.
The sun got warm enough on my skin that sweat started to drip, and then I’d hear a breeze before I’d feel it cool me down.
It made me ache to live near the beach.
Then I came back inside, put my pajama pants back on, then my sweatshirt, then my socks.
And then I napped.
A real nap. A tired nap. About thirty minutes. Not a depression sleep.
I woke up from that and decided to write about it.
But if I’m being honest, I know for a fact this depression isn’t over.
I can’t tell you whether I’ll depression sleep again the next time I go to bed.
I don’t usually plan it until I’m already there in it. Then I just choose to stay there
.
The world is A LOT right now. If you're paying attention and not going through some form of this, I think something is probably off in your head. We're bombarded daily with all of the political stuff, crime stories, relationship issues, raising kids, facing our aging parents' mortality and therefore our own, friendship maintenance, spiritual questions, and the list goes on.
We have to regulate somehow, and if we don't consciously do it, our body and mind has a way of doing it for us. I've been working on spending a little bit of time each day actively thinking about the things I'm grateful for and watching or reading something funny and/or completely disconnected from the trials I'm going through. I guess it's a bit of a form of avoidance, but I like to think of it more in terms of balance.
We can't stay in that heightened state of awareness and anxiety all the time or it will literally kill us.
Thank you for sharing what a lot of people are scared to talk about these days.