To anyone who lives with me, it would seem like I never leave my room. I'm a real life internet introvert who can't stand to be around anyone for more than a few hours at the most, and I also deal with depression-driven instincts to flee to bed as often as possible. My friends don't normally say anything about it, and it's probably because they're used to it.
This time was pretty bad, though. I literally had not left my room in three days. The first of the three days I was only awake for about four hours. There are lots of ways people learn to cope, and I've learned to use sleep. I didn't think I felt horribly depressed or anything; I just felt a little bit like a zombie. However, it got to me more than I thought it did. I've spent the past few weeks trying to get my sleep back on track, and it hasn't really worked. It always ends up with me awake all night again, but I thought this was just because I had really messed up my internal clock.
It took until last night for me to actually sleep through the night, and even then I kept waking up. When I woke up this morning, I realized I literally had no idea what to do with myself. I didn't want to face my responsibilities; I didn't even want to watch Netflix. I went back to sleep. When I woke up at 7pm, it occurred to me that maybe this was an issue. My mom texted me saying she was concerned with how much I was sleeping, and it genuinely seemed to come from nowhere to me. I hadn't been feeling particularly sad or anything.
My point here is that sometimes depression takes on unrecognizable forms. It's been hard enough for mental illness to gain social legitimacy as a real illness, but some of its less common symptoms are still written off as pure laziness or lack of drive. I might not be the most ambitious person on the planet, but even the laziest person on earth isn't going to lay in silence and stare into space for three straight days.
I could write this for anyone who has friends who are depressed, but in all honesty, it doesn't really apply here. If your friend isn't coming out of their room, they don't want to see anyone. Yes, that even includes you. If you're really concerned, shoot them a text. This is for anyone who has actually done this before and just thought they were in a funk. It's hard to look at the past few days of your life and feel anything but angry at yourself for wasting time. However, you have to know you didn't just do this out of the blue.
Feeling depressed can also mean feeling numb. If you want to know how to pull yourself out of it, the answer isn't really clear. It's hard to end something when you don't even know how it started. For me, I've found that planning even the smallest thing to do every day can help. This doesn't mean that planning on tackling your responsibilities head on will help you get out of bed. However, something small and unrelated might just seem harmless enough to be doable. As backward as it seems, the only way to get things done through depression is to be easier on yourself.
