My depression has many faces.
Most prominent is apathy. I lose interest in everything. I disengage. I can’t find any motivation.
Apathy pairs with sleep disturbances. With no interest in doing anything else with my time, I sleep. I sleep in, I take naps, I go to bed early. I can’t bring myself to function during normal hours.
Note, this oversleeping and constant tiredness is different from my fatigue, which is an extreme exhaustion and lack of energy throughout my body. Like everything’s heavy and takes too much effort to use. When I’m fatigued, even raising my arms or keeping my eyes open requires tremendous effort. Sometimes fatigue joins the depression party, sometimes its just sleeping. Lots of sleeping.
Then there is the depressed mood. It breaks in between bouts of apathy where I feel nothing to shower me in sadness. I cry for no reason. Or more accurately I emotionally breakdown and feel like I’m crying but I rarely ever produce tears. I well up my face, I pout, my eyes turn red and sting. But I have a hard time letting all that emotion actually go and release in tears.
And the worst face of all, the ugliest face: self abuse. I can be downright cruel to myself. Anger turned inward. I don’t let myself catch a break. Everything that goes wrong is my fault. Therapy really helped with this, and now that I haven’t been going, haven’t had someone reinforcing positive self talk and taking it easy on myself, I’ve noticed the becoming ever more present.
I’m not sure if it’s a face of depression or the ugly body that sums it all together, but my depression is a pit. It doesn’t want me to be happy. It resents every breakthrough and every fleeting second of caring, of self-worth, of cheer. It’s a vicious cycle that keeps bringing me down, no matter how hard I scrape to have a moment of breath and clarity, a scrap of joy. This multifaceted beast uses each visage to keep me down.
the best liar you know 
What brings me back a bit is to remember it wasn’t always like this. Don’t take that image apart or explain to yourself how that was in the past and doesn’t apply now… Just leave it as part of you.
Sending you hugs … I can relate to the apathy and the sense of no motivation to do anything … I can also relate to the negative self-talk. I always remember the CBT trick – “what would you tell a friend if they said what you are telling yourself” … that reminds me to prop myself up … depression is a bitch, but you are on the right track acknowledging it … hugs … and know that you are a wonderful person and I am happy that you are joining me in facilitating should I blog.