{"id":58320,"date":"2025-04-28T20:08:08","date_gmt":"2025-04-28T20:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/58320\/"},"modified":"2025-04-28T20:08:08","modified_gmt":"2025-04-28T20:08:08","slug":"i-didnt-know-i-was-depressed-i-just-thought-that-was-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/58320\/","title":{"rendered":"I didn\u2019t know I was depressed \u2013 I just thought that was me"},"content":{"rendered":"

First Person<\/a> is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca\/essayguide<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Illustration by Christine Wei<\/p>\n

I turned 41 this year. And somewhere between 39 and 41, I realized something that\u2019s hard to admit and even harder to explain: I\u2019ve probably been depressed for most of my life. <\/p>\n

That might sound dramatic. It\u2019s not like I came out of the womb sighing. But honestly, I can\u2019t remember a version of myself that wasn\u2019t carrying something heavy. As a kid growing up in Hong Kong, I didn\u2019t think of myself as depressed. That low, grey feeling just felt like my default setting \u2013 like it was baked into my personality. I didn\u2019t question it. I didn\u2019t even know life could feel different. It was like the humidity in July or the constant buzz of the Mong Kok neighbourhood \u2013 just part of the atmosphere I lived in. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been living in Toronto for nine months now. The sidewalks here are wider, the pace is slower, the pressure more polite, and the emotional chaos much better disguised. But still, I saw it \u2013 the same heaviness in people\u2019s eyes. On the sidewalks, in the streetcars, on the buses. Maybe not as loud as Hong Kong, but still there. And I began to wonder: maybe it\u2019s not just Hong Kong. Maybe it\u2019s not just me. Maybe the world is full of quietly heavy-hearted people, all trying to hold it together with small talk and to-do lists. <\/p>\n

Depression is weird like that. For some people, it sneaks in. For me, it\u2019s always been there \u2013 like blood in my body. Not something that arrived after a bad breakup or a job loss, but something that\u2019s been running through me since the moment I started noticing the world. At times, it felt like invisible chains \u2013 not enough to crush me, just tight enough to make everything harder. You learn to live with it. You even learn to joke about it. But deep down, you know you\u2019re dragging something no one else can see. <\/p>\n

Two years ago, everything caught up to me. Full system crash. I burned out, broke down and finally stopped pretending I was fine. I\u2019d seen psychiatric doctors before \u2013 half-heartedly \u2013 but this time, I went all in. I quit my job. I cleared the schedule. I made healing my full-time job. <\/p>\n

The recovery wasn\u2019t magical. There were heavy meds, roller coaster moods, long days of insomnia and longer nights of wondering if I\u2019d ever feel normal again. But toward the end of that nine-month stretch, I felt something I\u2019d never really felt before: I actually felt better. Steadier. Lighter. Like maybe life didn\u2019t have to be so hard. <\/p>\n

My doctor asked me, \u201cIf 10 is the best you\u2019ve ever felt and zero is the worst, where would you put yourself now?\u201d <\/p>\n

I paused. Six, I thought. But I didn\u2019t want to disappoint him. He\u2019d been kind, steady and didn\u2019t deserve a discouraging scorecard. So I said, \u201cSix and a half.\u201d <\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t exactly laugh, but I think he enjoyed the precision. Then he told me \u2013 gently, confidently \u2013 that I was probably closer to a seven or eight. <\/p>\n

But depression doesn\u2019t work like Yelp reviews. There\u2019s no clean measurement. Even the people who live with it don\u2019t always know how to rate their own pain. It\u2019s not like a broken arm you can point to. Sometimes the ache is everywhere. Sometimes it\u2019s nowhere. Sometimes you\u2019re fine until you\u2019re not. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve spent some time thinking about life as a 60-year arc. If the first two-thirds are for growing, exploring and experiencing the world \u2013 the most exciting parts \u2013 I\u2019ve already lost most of mine to depression. That thought used to haunt me. <\/p>\n

But lately, I\u2019ve started wondering: What if I still have the last third? What if I can live that part differently? <\/p>\n

Not just for myself, but mostly for the people I love. For my mom \u2013 my dad died when I was still in secondary school. For my younger sister and brother. I love them deeply. And I know I never really showed up the way an eldest son or big brother should \u2013 not because I didn\u2019t want to, but because I was living under a shadow too heavy to lift. <\/p>\n

My courage to reclaim this final chapter of life comes from a simple wish: to give something back. They have children now, good jobs, happy families \u2013 they\u2019ve built strong, full lives. They don\u2019t really need my help or care. But they still love me deeply. And more than anything, they want to see me happy \u2013 to see their son, their brother, at peace. <\/p>\n

And giving them that version of me \u2013 even now \u2013 helps me make peace with the years I couldn\u2019t be there in the way I wanted to. That\u2019s my wish. That\u2019s where my strength comes from. That\u2019s how I keep healing \u2013 and slowly, winning myself back.<\/p>\n

Joe Lee lives in Toronto.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"First Person is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4317],"tags":[6961,105,218,24789,24298,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-58320","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-first-person","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-mental-health","11":"tag-noastack","12":"tag-nodelphi","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114417402591512994","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}