Depression is Not an Evil Monster

CW: depression, suicide

"And you can stay busy all day
He’s never going away" -- the Mountain Goats, "Keeping House"

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I've lived with depression for 24 years, more than two-thirds of my life. That's not to say that I subjectively feel depressed all the time, thankfully, just that for me, depression is a chronic illness. Sometimes, it incapacitates me. Sometimes, I have periods of time that make me ask myself, "So is this what it's like to be a normal person?". Most of the time, it's present as ambient noise that rarely quiets completely.

It is currently popular to talk about depression as a thing exterior to a person, like a virus that uses a person as a host but has no real life of its own. I guess it's popular among people with good intentions: they want to de-stigmatized depression. But the metaphor of depression as an evil monster that takes you over makes me wildly uncomfortable. The evil-monster metaphor frames depression as a thing a person has, like a suitcase, that can be put down -- not an intrinsic part of a person. Alternately, it frames depression as being like a demon on your shoulder, whispering lies in your ear: it's a bad part of yourself, it's your "jerkbrain". It's an interloper that is occupying your mind and body with no regard for you.
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