Where She Still Lives.

Depression has always been a quiet passenger of mine. Anxiety rides along, too—those two have been constant companions, unwelcome but familiar. For a long time, I managed to keep moving with them in tow and even became good at it. “High-functioning,” people would say. But after my mother died, everything changed. Depression didn’t just ride shotgun anymore; it took the wheel.

It started slowly, and then all at once.

The first thing I did was kill all of my plants. Or maybe I let them die. Sometimes I wonder if it was intentional. I’d see them drooping, their leaves limp and browning, and think, I should water them, but then I wouldn’t. I chose not to. I’d sit on the couch and let that thought pass like a cloud I had no intention of chasing.

Only two and a half plants survived—my mother’s plants. I don’t know how they’re still standing, but they are. One of them, a fiddle-leaf fig, is even trying to grow again. A tender, pale-green leaf is unfurling from its dry, cracked stem. How dare it. Why are you still alive?

I stopped working out too. I tried a few times, half-heartedly, but I was exhausted—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I had no energy to give to myself. And honestly, I didn’t care. I gained twenty pounds, and it felt like a physical manifestation of the emotional heaviness I’d been dragging around inside.

I started eating things I normally wouldn’t. Junk. Empty comfort. My inner voice would say, Don’t eat that, and I’d go ahead and eat it anyway. Who cares? I didn’t. I couldn’t muster the strength to listen to the part of me that still wanted better.

I didn’t open mail. I didn’t return books. I didn’t pay bills. I didn’t return emails, calls, or text messages. I could go on and on.

Mostly, I stopped caring.
I. Just. Couldn’t. Be. Bothered.

What little energy I had left went to the people who needed me: my husband, my son, and my job. Thank God for my job. I love it, and it gave me something to hold onto when I felt like I was slipping. It gave me structure, purpose—a reason to get dressed and leave the house.

Before, my depression looked different. It was more polite and a lot quieter. I managed to hide it behind productivity and perfectionism. I didn’t even know it was there until my therapist gently said the word—depressed. I didn’t want to hear it. I pushed back. I argued. I insisted I was just tired, just going through a phase. But she saw it clearly, and she didn’t back down. She never does. She’s had her work cut out for her from the start.

She was right, of course. I was depressed and I just didn’t recognize it, because I was still functioning. I was still checking boxes, still smiling in photos, still making dinner and paying bills. And that’s the trick of it—depression doesn’t always look like lying in bed all day. Sometimes it looks like doing everything you’re supposed to do, with a hollowness you can’t explain.

I learned how to do that from my mother.

She was deeply depressed for as long as I can remember—my entire life, really. And she had every reason to be. Her story was one of loss and struggle, trauma and heartbreak, but she was also brilliant at functioning. She kept going. She got things done. She showed up for me in all the ways she could, even while carrying her own invisible weight.

God knows I tried to lift her out of it. I spent so many years trying to make her happy. And sometimes, I succeeded. When I was pregnant, she lit up in a way I’d never seen before. It was the happiest, healthiest version of her I ever knew. The first few years of my son’s life brought her joy. It also gave her purpose. But eventually, the illness caught up to her and It took and took, until there was nothing left to give.

Still, she functioned. Until she couldn’t. And somewhere along the way, I inherited that blueprint.

But now I’m realizing something: I don’t want to just function. I don’t want to coast through my life like I’m checking items off a list, wearing resilience like a badge. I want more than survival.

Which brings me back to the fig leaf. That stubborn, delicate thing reaching for light it shouldn’t have. It’s growing, despite everything. Despite me.

Maybe, just maybe, I can grow again, too.