Today, I’ll share a journal entry I created 5 years ago, that still applies. It’s a very apt description of how depression feels physically for me.

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August 3rd, 2020

Have you ever been buried in sand?

Imagine one of those random beach days, the sun shining, clouds drifting by lazily, the sound of the gentle waves of the ocean lapping in your ears, as someone giggles while they scoop sand onto your prone body. Your eyes are closed and you can feel the pressure of the sand becoming greater and greater, the more that gets piled atop you. Eventually, you are completely engulfed, with only your head free.

Now, imagine the feeling of how heavy the sand is. It isn’t too bad, you know that if you moved, it would be fairly easy to escape.

But then, the person that enjoyed covering you up, starts slowly pouring sea water on the sand you are encapsulated in. You can feel the coldness of it with each tip of the bucket. Most of it trickles down your body, but the sand becomes saturated and the weight of it is even greater than before. You find that moving has become a bit more difficult. It isn’t like being in water, where the resistant force of moving your body feels a tad sluggish. In water, you feel like you are floating and free. In this coffin of wet sand, you feel trapped, like your body is too heavy to move. Now, more sand is being piled on, more water poured. The pressure, the weight… makes it hard to breathe. You struggle to move your arms, your legs, anything… to no avail.

This is what depression feels like in my body. This is how futile it feels every single day, just trying to move. Even when I am able to go about my day, walking around the house for menial things, this is how heavy my body feels. With every step further down into the dark, abysmal chasm of depression, another layer of wet sand is added. The weight becomes greater and greater, the struggle to move becomes more and more difficult.

And this does not include the pain I have every day in my low back and legs. This? This is JUST one physical aspect of my depression.

And for those of you that do not understand because you don’t suffer like this, I invite you to take someone with you to the beach (or a sandbox even), lay down, and have them bury you as deeply as possible in wet sand, while you recall the most sad day you’ve ever experienced, something so sad that it brings tears to your eyes at the memory… and then try to move. This will give you a modicum of understanding, though it truly wouldn’t suffice.

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Today is a Wet Sand day. I actually don’t have them as often as I used to, but when they hit, they hit hard. It permeates my entire existence.

Good thing I have therapy in a minute…