FUNCTIONAL DEPRESSION FROM MY LENS.🥀

Functional depression is when life doesn't stop,but joy quietly does.I still wake up.I still do what needs to be done.I still show up, reply to messages, make plans, meet expectations. From the outside, everything looks intact.But inside, something feels constantly muted.I'm not always sad in a loud way.It's more like a dull heaviness that never fully leaves.Like I'm moving through my days with a low battery,conserving energy for what's necessary,surviving on autopilotbecause actually living feels like too much. I can laugh and still feel empty right after.I can achieve something and feel nothing settle in my chest.I can be surrounded by people and still feel strangely, profoundly alone.That's the confusing part.Functional depression doesn't take away your ability to function.It takes away your ability to feel fulfilled while doing so.It takes away the why.I wake up.Not because I'm excited about the day.Not because there's something I'm looking forward to.Just because... I woke up.And that's supposed to be enough. But it's not.It's never enough when you're living without purpose,when you're just going through the motionsbecause stopping feels scarier than continuing.I don't always recognize it immediately.Sometimes I think I'm just tired.Sometimes I think I'm unmotivated or lazy.Sometimes I convince myself this is just teenagehood,just growth,just something everyone goes through.But it's deeper than that. It's waking up to the sound of complainingconstant, relentless, suffocating complainingand feeling like the walls are closing in before the day even starts.It's carrying someone else's negativityon top of your ownuntil you can't tell where theirs ends and yours begins.It's wanting to disappear.Not dramatically.Not loudly.Just... quietly. Just stop existing for a whileso you don't have to keep pretendingthat you're okay with any of this.And the worst part?I'm good at pretending.I'm so good at it.I show up.I perform. I meet expectations.And because I can still do that,because I haven't "fallen apart,"it's easy for people to assume I'm fine.It's easy for me to assume I'm fine.After all, I'm managing.But managing isn't the same as living.Managing is survival mode stretched so thinit starts to feel like the default.And somewhere along the way,I forgot what it feels like to actually want to be here. Not out of obligation.Not out of fear.Not because I have to.But because I want to.From my lens,functional depression isn't about falling apart.It's about holding it together for so longthat you forget what ease feels like.It's about being so used to heavinessthat lightness feels foreign.Suspicious, even.Like if I let myself feel good,something will come crashing down to remind methat this—this muted, dull, barely-there existenceis what I deserve. Maybe the first step isn't fixing it.Maybe it's just being honest about it.Even with myself.Especially with myself.I don't have the answers.I don't have a plan.I don't even have hope most days. But I have this:The truth.The honest, uncomfortable, unglamorous truththat I'm not okay.That I haven't been okay for a while.That waking up every day feels less like livingand more like enduring.And maybe that's enough for now.Not the enduring.But the honesty. The acknowledgment that this is real,that what I'm feeling matters,even if no one else sees it.Even if I barely see it myself.I'm here.Not because I want to be.But because I am.And for now,that's all I've got.

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