Ah, I remember those days, prior to medication… Nary a day went by when I didn’t want to do nothing – despite the double negative – except stare blankly at the dusty ceiling overhead as I lay on my queen-sized mattress with my blankets and teddy bear. Or stare at the back of my eyelids... It’s not that I wanted to die – suicide was never a consideration. It’s just that I wanted to do as much of the opposite of living as I could, or cut off the part of my soul that was killing me slowly.

In an ideal world, your doctor or your mom would warn you ahead of time, tell you to hold on, because next week or the week after you are going to experience a thing known as depression. “So, darling, batten down the hatches and have some crossword puzzles handy because it’s going to be a bumpy ride.” But, one day, you are normal, whatever that is…and the next you are not, without any forewarning. It’s as if some evil genie mysteriously casts a spell on you. And when you’re depressed or apathetic, or whatever you want to call it, normal is a difficult concept to recall. You don’t have the insight to define it or imagine it, even though you’ve experienced it in the past.

It goes something like this: you feel your will sliding down in your mind, slipping away while you are dusting the mantle in your robe and slippers. Every ambition you might have had that day gets translated into a certain kind of tiredness, and all of a sudden you just want to lie down because everything is just too heavy. The dishes remain on the counter, your homework remains a blank piece of paper, and the dogs just look at you waiting for their pets. But, no matter how hard you try, for anyone’s sake, you simply cannot do it. The normal optimism from your soul drains away and you are left with Apathy for a petting companion.

And the worst part about being depressed is that you know you were once normal. You had goals. You exercised. You made friends and went to tea parties or sold Avon. What happened to you? Do other people feel this way regularly? How does anyone get anything done – those men and women who have children, work full-time, go to school, and keep the house spotless? You might start to think that you’re just lazy and immature, and that you are making excuses not to do your chores.

When it lasts for several weeks to several months, you think that maybe you’re just getting old or you have some kind of disease, like Lyme disease, chronic fatigue, or mono. The doctor tests you and comes to the conclusion that it’s time for anti-anxiety or anti-depressant medication. After many more tests and possibly years of denial, you decide that he might be right. So, you get the script and you take your first pill. Now, it’s time to wait for the stuff to slink through your blood – twenty to forty days of waiting.

What do you do in the meantime?