I’ve been thinking about this post for months. A week ago, I started to think in more specific ways about it. I planned to post yesterday, but I didn’t. Why? Because I hadn’t written anything yet. Not one word. Why not?

I’m not entirely sure, but I think in part it’s because depression can be embarrassing, especially once the pain of it is not so acute. I keep thinking of all the things I did and didn’t do because of my depression. Mostly it’s what I didn’t do: write more, publish more, network, keep in touch with friends, apply for fellowships/jobs, take risks, believe I was capable of success (whatever success means).

My best friend, who’s known me for at least 35 years, liked one of the metaphors I used while I was getting TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) treatment: when I was feeling my worst, worthless and hopeless, I was standing outside in a storm, the sleet stinging my face and the dark wind howling. About two-thirds of the way through my nearly 3-month treatment, I told my friend that I was in the vestibule of a house—out of the storm, but not inside where normal people existed, people who actually felt optimism and wanted to be alive. Before I finished treatment, I felt like I was back outside but on the front porch, then in the vestibule again, before finally making it inside.

I wanted that final image—being inside the house—to be accompanied by warm light, maybe even a choir voicing the stereotypical “ah” of revelation and belonging. But that’s not how it felt. Really, it just felt like an ordinary house, an ordinary life with its linoleum and constant laundry, except that now I could think about the future and imagine taking classes, doing some work for pay, even starting a new career path. I could imagine trying something new, with all the energy and risk that took, and possibly not failing. I felt, for the first time in a long time, that perhaps I was not worthless.

It’s still seeping into my consciousness, like light rain on earth that’s faced a 33-year drought, how much easier it is to wake up in the morning now, post-TMS. I had been pushing myself through the hours for so long, alternating the carrot (chocolate, fantasy novels, simultaneous tv & phone games) and the stick (loved ones and pets depend on me, I have to do something to justify my existence). I worked hard to get through a day without weeping, or staying in bed, or thinking in too much detail about ways to off myself. It was so very exhausting, a sheer act of willpower, a trudge, a slog. And now, suddenly, it’s not.

Oh, I still have ME/CFS, which means my body is constantly fatigued and in pain. But not my mind, my psyche, my soul. My mind, freed of the Eeyore voice asking, What’s the point?, has been starting to work on the problems of my particular situation: how to find work that both provides satisfaction and pays, how to move to somewhere I actually like (my hometown, perhaps, or the UK), how to feel better physically, how to help my husband who’s dealing with long COVID. And maybe we can’t move, and maybe there aren’t treatments for our strange and little-understood illnesses, but there may be other solutions I and the world simply haven’t found yet. 

I was diagnosed with depression not many months after I was diagnosed with ME/CFS (just Chronic Fatigue Syndrome back then), at age 21. It was 1990, and I’ve been on some anti-depressant or other for most of that time. I also had the privilege of teaching college students writing, a privilege that buoyed me for many years; I can see now that feeling like I was good at my job, that I made a difference to students, was the main antidote to my depression. Oh, I reveled in student love, which was really love for the instrument of their discovery of their own agile minds, their discovery of the possibilities of language. I helped them see that their voices, their thoughts mattered, and they helped me stay alive.

It was a long road between leaving teaching and trying TMS treatment, a road paved with divorce and the death of my sister, who had always made me feel like one of the most important people in her life. But I was also lucky enough to find and marry my current husband, a Brit who’s lived in the States for over 25 years but still has his lovely accent, and I’m fortunate that my first husband and I remain friends. Still, without the life buoy of teaching, I was sinking.

When something affects your daily life, you pay attention to anything you come across that mentions that topic. I don’t remember now the article or book or podcast that discussed alternative depression treatments. I do remember reading up about psilocybin, ketamine, and TMS. Somehow TMS was the last on that list, not covered in the splashy headlines about “hallucinogenic drugs for depression.” What I do remember is posting on social media about these treatments, and mentioning that I hadn’t found a local clinic offering ketamine or TMS that took insurance. And then a friend commented, “Insurance covers TMS where I live.”

That comment burrowed into my consciousness for a few weeks, rooting through the hopelessness that comes with depression, until I finally got onto our insurance’s website and discovered that there was a clinic whose services they covered. It was only a ten-minute drive away, and the website even directly addressed inclusivity and acceptance, a true rarity in the mid-South.

Which shows you how much of an impact your words, even a straightforward comment on social media, can have on other people. When someone is struggling with depression, they often don’t respond to your support in a way that makes it seem like that support meant anything, changed anything. But even though they can’t always respond with appropriate gratitude, your support matters. Believe me.

So is TMS a permanent solution to my depression? To everyone’s? Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve been back outside in the howling since my treatment ended, triggered by witnessing animal abuse that seems more common—or perhaps just less hidden?—here in the South. But then, to my relief, after a few weeks I found myself inside the house, making optimistic plans for the future. 

My life has its swells and troughs like anyone’s. I am tender when it comes to family, having lost the person who worked so constantly to connect me and my brothers and their kids; it is easy for me to feel disconnected, unimportant, adrift on an island with only my husband and our dogs and cats. Career issues, however, have become less personal, with rejections for my writing diminished from boulders to pebbles. I’ve even signed up for a fall class that will hopefully be integral to my next career, as meaningful, if not always as joyful, as teaching. But that’s a different post.

If you struggle with depression, I urge you to keep seeking help. The standard treatments of anti-depressants and therapy didn’t work for me, or at least they didn’t work consistently, or enough. There are other options out there. And you deserve to feel better, truly. The house is waiting for you, the door ready to open so you can step inside.