occasionally, and only slightly

Contrary to popular belief, depression is not so much a state of being as it is a realisation — specifically, a realisation about one's own personal outlook of futility, which arrives not, as one might expect, at the bottom of things, but rather in the disconcerting calm of feeling, for once, entirely all right. It is in this moment of relative equilibrium that the preceding months or years arrange themselves into perspective, and the perspective is not always welcome.

The roads that open from here are two, and neither is particularly useful. The first is regression — not a passive slide but an active one, born of a deep and not entirely irrational suspicion that the okay feeling is temporary, unearned, or some elaborate trick of circumstance that will shortly be corrected; and so, rather than wait for the correction, one engineers it, dismantling the equilibrium with a quiet efficiency that might, under other circumstances, be rather admirable. The second road is its apparent opposite: the overconfident march forward, in which the realisation is mistaken for resolution, the clarity of feeling fine misread as evidence that the thing has been solved, and one proceeds accordingly — restructuring, recommitting, optimising — with the particular energy of someone who has decided, without quite examining the decision, that the problem is behind them.

The question that neither road answers, and that the realisation itself conspicuously refuses to address, is whether knowing any of this changes anything at all. One suspects the honest answer is: occasionally, and only slightly.

Note: I'm a fan of British English and for some reason, have chosen to foray into adjusting my spelling to match.