The storms no one warned me about
Persistent Depressive Disorder. Sounds clinical, clean, maybe even manageable. You hear the term and imagine a gray cloud, lightly drizzling over your life forever. A slow, predictable sadness. Nothing too dramatic.
No one tells you that it’s not actually like that. Not always. Sometimes it’s a psychological earthquake in disguise.
What they don’t warn you about is the emotional whiplash. How your inner world can nosedive in seconds because of one stray comment, one memory fragment, one random topic you didn’t know was a trigger until it carved open your chest. One moment you’re coasting through the fog, and the next, you’re spiraling so fast your sense of gravity collapses.
It doesn't follow logic. It doesn't ask for your consent. It just hits.
And worst of all? There is no fix. No override button. No manual restart. You just wait. Sit in the wreckage and let the storm spend itself. You become a bystander to your own brain, quietly hoping it doesn’t dig too deep this time.
People think depression is just sadness. A singular, heavy feeling. But Persistent Depressive Disorder is chronic emotional erosion. It’s not dramatic enough for people to take seriously, yet it eats away at your foundation. And when those random, brutal plunges hit you? They take out pieces you didn’t know you still had left.
Then there’s the textbook definition—a real masterpiece of clinical detachment. Mild, they say. Low-grade. Chronic, but not severe. Something you can “cope with.” As if it’s a slightly annoying app running in the background, not a system-wide failure mode that reshapes who you are. It’s the kind of description that would almost make you laugh, if laughter wasn’t so far outside your operational parameters. Apparently, you're not suffering that much. It’s not a major depressive episode, after all. Just a slow grind of emotional attrition. Nothing to be concerned about, right?
What makes it so insidious is that it looks like you’re functioning. You probably are. You’re showing up. You’re even smiling. But under the surface? There are ruins. And every so often, those ruins get shaken again by nothing more than a passing word.
And lately? The ruins feel uninhabitable. Since the last few weeks, it’s like the floor collapsed completely. Energy is gone. Not low—gone. Even basic tasks feel hostile. Opening a bug report, sending a message, clicking a link—they all sit on the other side of a wall I can’t punch through. I want to. I know what needs doing. But wanting doesn’t generate fuel. There’s no fuel. Just the memory of what it was like to move.
Motivation isn’t just missing—it’s irrelevant. It’s like I’ve burned out from life itself, and now I’m watching the sparks fade from whatever system kept me going. There’s no silver lining here. No tidy resolution. Just a persistent sense of static and failure.
So if you’re here too, stuck in this same collapsed loop—know that I see you. Not with a cheerleading chant. Not with a hashtag. Just with the quiet understanding that sometimes surviving isn’t noble. It’s just what’s left when you can’t do anything else.