Let’s talk about the other kind of depression.

Not the cinematic tragedy. Not the sobbing-on-the-bathroom-floor, mascara-smudged, thunderstorm-in-your-ribcage brand. That one has drama, flair, poetry. That one gets novels, Oscar nominations, and charity ballads with sad piano chords in A minor.

No, this one’s quieter. Greyer. This one has the emotional tone of a beige waiting room. It’s not sorrow, not grief, not rage. It’s not even despair, if we’re being honest.

It’s ennui.

Capital E. French and fancy. Sounds better than saying, “I haven’t felt a human emotion in three days but I did eat a crumpet because I had to take a vitamin and didn’t want to die.”

This depression doesn’t cry. It shrugs. It lounges in your brain like a cat on your keyboard, pressing all the wrong buttons and then acting confused when you stop working. It doesn’t scream that life is meaningless—it just kind of... forgets why it ever meant anything to begin with.

Everything is muted. Everything is a little bit too much and not quite enough at the same time.

It’s the fog. The flatline. The absence of joy and sorrow. It’s the middle of the sandwich when you didn’t put enough filling in.

And the worst part?

It’s boring.

I don’t even get the drama. Just a constant parade of “meh.”

So what do you do, when you’ve misplaced your motivation, your spark, your sense of forward motion? What happens when even the idea of joy feels like it requires a permissions slip and two weeks’ notice?

Well.

You rebel.

But not in some big, cinematic, phoenix-rising-from-the-ashes way. Please. That’s exhausting just to think about.

I mean in the smallest ways. The stupid little ways. The petty, human, defiant ways.

This morning, I made my bed. I got back in it fifteen minutes later—but I made it first. That’s called style.

I added cinnamon to my coffee, even though I couldn’t taste the difference, because it made me feel like the kind of person who does that. That’s aspirational.

I replied to two emails. Only two. But those were two more than zero, and sometimes zero is the goal of this particular flavor of depression.

Small wins. Tiny rebellions.

They add up.

Not to some grand, glorious resurrection of your Old Self (who, frankly, was always a bit of a mess too, let’s be real), but to something. A little hum of aliveness.

A flicker. A twitch. A pulse.

See, healing doesn’t always look like progress. Sometimes it looks like washing a fork. Or stretching one leg. Or actually taking your meds before 2pm. Sometimes it’s just being, even if you don’t particularly enjoy the being part that day.

This kind of depression won’t kill you with knives. It’ll do it with nothing. Just a slow drift into blankness, a creeping stillness. So staying in motion, even in silly, stubborn ways, becomes an act of resistance.

You wear the ridiculous socks. You microwave the sad leftovers. You watch The Muppet Movie for the 87th time because you remember what joy sounded like, even if you can’t quite feel it in the moment.

It counts.

It all counts.

I’m not writing this from the far side of recovery, perched on a mountain top with a green smoothie and a motivational quote tattooed on my wrist. I’m writing it from the middle. From the fog. With bed hair. And mismatched pajamas. And last night’s dishes still in the sink.

But I’m still here.

And if you are too?

That’s not nothing.

That’s everything.

So let’s keep showing up.
Let’s keep going.
Let’s make the toast.
Let’s defy the void in house slippers and ironic t-shirts.

Because the apathy can’t kill wonder.
It can only delay it.

And I’ve got time.
And toast.