The Year I Stopped Pretending

I told everyone I was fine. I laughed at jokes, showed up to work, paid my bills. But every morning I lay in bed for twenty minutes trying to find a reason to get up. Depression isn't sadness. It's the absence of anything. It's a fog that makes everything feel pointless. It took a panic attack in a grocery store for me to finally ask for help. Therapy, medication, a support group — it didn't fix me overnight. But it showed me that I didn't need fixing. I needed to be seen.