February 19, 2021 I did not have a word for it until my senior year of college. Looking back, I can see it started before then, in cycles and seasons when I described myself as “down,” “in a funk,” “struggling,” “low.” My friend talked me into seeing a counselor at our college’s health center, and there I was given the word: depression. It felt foreign at first, as if this couldn’t be me, couldn’t be this thing I was feeling. But it had been so long since I felt emotionally steady, emotionally “up,” that I didn’t remember what normal felt like anymore. I no longer had the energy to wrestle with the thoughts in my head. I was stuck in a fog — confused, overwhelmed, suffocated.