My depression has taken root again. Depression on antidepressants is interesting. It’s way different from depression without them. With the antidepressants, I’m not crying all the time. I don’t hear a voice screaming that I should just end it. In fact, it’s so subtle that, if I were not well versed in depression having had it my entire adult life, I wouldn’t even notice it was there.

This time, my depression has taken the form of a fair to middling sense of malaise and generally not caring about anything at all. I don’t care about anything. I don’t care about this blog, my friends, getting a new job or even my appearance. I’ve worn a ponytail to work for the last three days because I can’t be bothered to do anything with my hair. I have blown off my friends so that I can sit in my darkened house not watching the television in the background while doing jigsaw puzzles on my ipad. The only things I care about are my animals and jigsaw puzzles.

I still care about my animals, so that’s good. The last time my depression showed up, I neglected my animals. My cat went unfed a few times and had to use a really disgusting litter box because I couldn’t be arsed to clean it. I cleaned the litter box the other day and I’ve fed both my animals twice a day without fail.

I’ve gotten out of bed and gone to work, even though, most of the time, I can’t be arsed to actually do my job. Sometimes, I just sit and stare at my computer screen for a while without doing anything. I just watch the clock. Yet, to all appearances, it looks like nothing is wrong. It doesn’t seem like I’m in a major bout with depression.

I’m writing about it, so that’s good. There was a time when that would have been impossible. Depression would scream at me so loudly whenever I tried to talk about it. Now, Eeyore’s voice is all but silent. Eeyore is what I call the voice in my head that yells at me. Eeyore may be silent, but he’s still there. Instead of yelling at me, he’s making it so that I don’t care about anything. I am unmotivated. What is the point of doing anything?

I’ve been working on a drawing for a certain reader for a while now. I haven’t been able to touch it. It just sits there, taunting me, telling me that I’ll never actually finish it, making me feel badly because I can’t touch it.

Eeyore might not be yelling at me, but this is almost worse. I’d almost rather have him face me directly than do this subversive business where I don’t care about anything.

Not caring about anything sounds nice. No worrying, no social dilemmas, no second guessing yourself, but it’s just as debilitating and immobilizing as a non-stop crying jag. At least when I was crying, I felt something. Now, I feel nothing. I am numb, and not comfortably so, as Pink Floyd would lead you to believe.

There’s nothing I can do about it. I’m already taking antidepressants. They help, but they don’t make it go away. It will never go away. Not entirely. Sometimes, the thought of living out the rest my life with the yoke of depression around my neck makes me so exhausted that I don’t want to continue. I might as well just sit down here and now and not move forever, and that’s the insidiousness of depression. It’s sneaky like that. It keeps changing forms. As soon as you recognize and confront one form, it’s already off to another.

Depression a dumb thing to have going on in your brain. Really, having a voice in your head that makes you not want to continue living is completely counterintuitive to everything about being human. It cancels out the survival instinct. It makes it so you can’t move.

All I can do is recognize it for what it is; that’s Eeyore talking, not me. I keep my head down. I continue to get out of bed. I feed my animals and try to ignore the voice, hoping it will go away soon.

Eeyore is telling me not to post this, which is exactly why I will.