The stereotype of depression is sadness—depression. People think that depression is constant sadness. And while those are emotions that I feel, it’s only a spectrum of the myriad of emotions I can feel when my depression ‘acts out’. I feel that the oddest form my depression has ever taken is the inability to do basic things, like clean my room. Sometimes I stand there for hours and staring at the mess that is my room with the inability to actually start grabbing clothes and throwing them in the dirty laundry bin. Because here’s the thing: depression is many things, but simple isn’t one of them.

The harder thing about mental illness is that there is no right way to be, no right way to feel—just like mourning. There’s no wrong way to suffer with your depression or feel your anxiety. Sometimes you might feel exuberant for an entire month, but then one day the next week you could feel this dark feeling of hopeless, not the kind that appears gradually, but the kind that hits like a truck. Sometimes those feelings of desolation leave me bedridden. Other times my depression makes me feel like somebody else entirely—a ghost hovering in my own shoes. And even sometimes I’ll sit there on my bed staring at the wall trying do one of my many responsibilities. I never expected some of these small things to be in any way related to my depression. I didn’t know that I could be purely happy with depression. I thought it would lead to the stereotype of always being sad, and dragging my feet, but that’s not true. Depression is confusing, depression is uncertain. It’s isolating and alienating and sometimes it’s like constantly carrying someone on your back.

Sometimes depression makes you feel like someone else. It’s already odd dealing with the person you already are, and then when you feel like someone else entirely life feels a little more complicated than it has to be. Depression is complicated, just like we are.