When Kody was first struggling with depression, it wasn’t something I understood. It drove me crazy that depression for him just seemed like a ready made excuse for not going to work or not doing something he was supposed to do. I just couldn’t understand what was so challenging about just sucking it up and getting those things done. But at that point I just didn’t understand what depression felt like. My misunderstanding depression made it challenging for us to deal with day to day life.

Up until this last year even though I learned more about depression, I hadn’t really experienced it. It really took having my own experiences with depression to understand what he’d gone through and how unfair it had been for me to complain. The root of my unfairness was all in misunderstanding how depression worked, because in my head it was something to just shove down and get over. But real depression doesn’t work like that.

When we were together a lot of my anger at him was due to misunderstanding depression. I was so mad that he wasn’t helping or contributing enough to bills because he’d bail on going to work. To me that looked like someone choosing laziness over responsibility because he’d be sleeping all day, or playing videogames, or even hiding out in parking lots rather than going to work. But it wasn’t laziness. His depression was all consuming.

In the last few months, I’ve had my own real experiences with depression which have taught me what depression feels like. I loose whole days to sleeping and watching videos because I am so tired. When there are days where no one is around, I don’t bother showering or changing clothes. What is crazy is I’m still guilt tripping myself, the same way I guilt tripped him.

I know what it is to be depressed. I’ve seen what depression can do. But still there is something built into me that is judgemental of even myself when living in a depressed state. Depression is not laziness. Depression is real. It is a challenge to overcome without therapy, without meds, and without allowing yourself some days to just be depressed.

I hope Kody knows how sorry I am for misunderstanding depression when he started dealing with it. I know now what it feels like and all I can say is that it sucks. Depression sucks. It is the enemy. It is the worst.