Recognising my Depression, Returning to Happy

Over the past week (1-6 Feb 2026) , I barely left the house.

Partly because I could afford to – a decent window cleaning job bought me some breathing room – yet mostly because I didn’t have the energy to be anywhere else.

I lay on the lounge, eyes open, staring into space while the same heavy thoughts circled without landing. At one point, I spent hours looking at the ceiling, not thinking, not worrying, not even daydreaming.
Just blank.
No inner noise.
No momentum.
That emptiness doesn’t stay empty for long.

I get stuck under the weight of the world beyond my own four walls. Global mess. Constant noise. Problems too big to solve and too loud to escape. It freezes me in place, like pressing pause on myself.

Unfortunately these days of nothingness aren’t new to me.

They’ve been turning up since my twenties. Every month, a few days disappear into that quiet void. Then I resurface capable, articulate, productive, and people assume that’s the full picture.

It isn’t.
The quieter version is just as real. It’s simply less visible and easier to miss.
When I’m up, I’m energised, switched on, full of ideas.
When I’m down, it’s hollow. Heavy. Featureless. I don’t talk much about that side, not out of shame, but because emptiness doesn’t tell a good story.
There’s nothing to report.
Nothing done.
Nothing felt.
Nothing restored.

What finally shifted it wasn’t a breakthrough – it was noticing the absence.
Realising how long I’d been gone without actually going anywhere. That’s when it landed for me. This isn’t just a bad patch or a flat few days. This is depression — at least, it’s how it shows up for me.
Not dramatic, not cinematic – just a slow, numbing weight that drains colour and urgency from things that once mattered.

The difference now is that I recognise what’s happening. I’m calling it what it is.

Because I can see it more clearly, I’m beginning to make small, deliberate adjustments – not dramatic changes, just quiet course corrections. I’m returning to the things that have always anchored me when my head goes missing.

• I’m writing, even when it feels clumsy, because words have always helped me locate myself.
• I’m walking – along the beach, around town, anywhere my legs will take me – letting movement do some of the thinking. I’m allowing quiet time without turning it into isolation.
• I’m picking up the camera again, not to produce anything special, just to notice light and detail.
• I’m stepping back behind the microphone, because radio has a way of reminding me I still have a voice and a place in the world, and music provides the happy endorphins.

I’m not pretending there’s a clean fix or a finish line.

Being neurodivergent means this ebb and flow may always be part of my landscape.

Yet by returning to the things that make me feel present, curious, and connected, I’m giving myself a way back. Not all at once. Just enough to remember what happiness feels like, and that it’s still possible to find it again.