I’m the kind of person who tells herself to suck it up and carry on.
I’ve tried ignoring it. I’ve tried counselling. I’m medicated.
And still… there are days I just can’t get up.
Today was one of those days.
The world felt too loud, too heavy, too much. My words didn’t feel heard. My thoughts turned on me. I convinced myself that everything I’d done over the last few days had upset someone, inconvenienced someone, put me in the way, asked for too much. I became my own worst enemy.
So today became about resetting. Restarting. Surviving.
And weirdly… that reset started at 7:30am.
No breakfast club today.
Today, mommy made breakfast.
It was chaotic. Loud. Messy. Toast crumbs everywhere. Arguments over cups and who sat where. But it was lovely. And that small pocket of time – just being mom – meant more to me than I can explain.
What hurts is realising it took a miniature breakdown for me to understand that sometimes, being mom is what helps me feel like me again.
I got them all to school and I was back home by 9am.
I’d eaten breakfast. Drunk a glass of water. Phoned the GP for my son. Then I was on the sofa.
Curtains closed.
TV on.
Fire lit.
The warmth of the fire and the darkness of the room wrapped around me and pulled me straight back to sleep.
The next thing I knew, it was 13:07.
Damn.
A message from the GP popped up – appointment at 3:30pm. My 7-year-old’s asthma has been bad, and there is nothing worse than watching your child struggle to breathe. That needed sorting. No matter how I felt.
So I got up.
I washed. I got dressed. A load of washing went on – a quick wash, because let’s be honest, half of it wasn’t even dirty. My kids throw absolutely anything in the wash basket because once it’s out of sight and out of their room, it magically becomes a mom job.
By the time I left to collect my 7-year-old, I’d somehow done two loads of washing, both on the electric airer.
The living room was cleaned.
The kitchen was cleaned.
The floors were vacuumed.
Honestly… talk about a hero.
If anyone walked into my house, it would look like I hadn’t sat down all day.
But the truth?
I slept my depressive state away.
And that’s the part people don’t see. Depression doesn’t always look like mess and chaos. Sometimes it looks like productivity. Sometimes it looks like ticking boxes. Sometimes it looks like getting everything done while feeling absolutely empty inside.
So I’m putting this out there – honestly, openly, unfiltered.
Does anyone actually know how to manage depression?
Can it be managed?
Are there dos and don’ts?
Things that genuinely help on the days where getting up feels impossible?
Because I’m trying. I really am.
And some days, trying looks like surviving.
Some days, it looks like sleeping.
And some days, it looks like toast crumbs, a warm fire, and reminding myself that I’m still here.
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