The Inverted Arc

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It isn’t your friend. It can’t be negotiated with. It’ll get you when you least expect it. It just wants to crush you.

It makes no sense. It doesn’t care how rich or how poor, how healthy or how sick you are. It doesn’t care about you at all. It just wants to bury you.

Depression is a bitch, my friends. It really is.

And I’m fortunate.

I’m fortunate that it has reared its ugly head later in my life. I’m fortunate that it is not nearly as strong in me as it is in many others. I’m fortunate that I have family and friends who understand and who love me unconditionally. I’m fortunate that I’m well-off enough to get help without having to wait years for government-sponsored care, or have to choose whether to eat or to get medicine.

I know a lot of people have to fight this thing with a lot less. I know a lot of people have lost to it.

Nobody wins against it. At best, you keep it at bay.

I’m sitting here, weeping, feeling hopeless and useless, while I’m telling myself over and over that this will pass, that these feelings make no sense, that we will get through this like we have done before. I know this is true. I have faith in the medicine and my family and myself.

It still sucks. A lot.

But it helps to write about it. Getting the words out helps. Thinking about at a higher level helps me see the inverted arc of each episode, and that means I can see the end. It’s still a ways off. But it will come.

Written in late December 2023, near the “bottom of the arc”.

5 thoughts on “The Inverted Arc”

  3. You are right that, at the moment when you are in the middle of it, depression’s the worst feeling and you can’t imagine a way out. But every bout with depression has a beginning, middle and end. The beginning is terrifying, because you understand the difficult road ahead. The middle is exhausting, since it can sometimes turn minutes to hours, to borrow a phrase from Gordon Lightfoot. The end can sometimes come as a shock, as you don’t always expect it, in your altered frame of mind. But there is an end to everything. It’s a reality in life. And one great thing to do is to understand what you can do and what you have around you to help. Find one thing that you’re thankful for and it can very easily become ten. It doesn’t make that moment easier, but it helps you stay focused until you reach the end of that bout.

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