I've been depressed my entire life, what is it like to not be depressed?

If you could imagine a quiet mind, contented feeling. Able to fully concentrate on whatever you are doing at the moment and living in only that moment. That is what it is like to not be depressed.

You know how sometimes you need to make a very small, trivial decision and you just don't do it? Like you might drop something and just stand staring at it thinking, "I should pick this up...but I really don't want to...". When you aren't depressed, you pick it up.

I think Andrew Solomon said it best in his TED talk: the opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality. Not being depressed is being interested in things, in life, in living. It's actually *feeling* alive.

Quite frankly, the moments when I am not depressed are the greatest moments in my life. Its like being freed. Every moment in depression for me is like Im trapped underwater, and when its gone its like I have finally submerged. The world goes from monotone with no color, to shining and beautiful.

I searched for this question because it was one I wanted to ask. I'm answering for someone like myself who has managed depression, in the same sense that people can have well-managed and treated diabetes. I still have the disease, but have learnt to manage it so that it has less impact on my life. I am pretty sure that although I was always sensitive and introverted, I did not have depression before the age of 17. I'm now 38 with ongoing mild depression. I've experienced several episodes of moderate depression. Not being depressed is a baseline mental cleanness, an uncomplicated ease. You just don't reflect all that much on yourself. You are focussed on the outside world. To small disappointments, you just shrug and walk on. You don't mull over things endlessly. Your image of yourself is on the generous side (even if you assume it's realistic) - how a loving and biased parent would assess you, not how a fair interviewer would assess you. You feel baseline secure and when there's some negative external event, you expect in your gut that everything will turn out ok in the end. Well-managed depression by contrast, still involves a baseline pain and heaviness that you have to struggle against, week in week out. Sometimes you get distracted from it, but not for long. Each morning you wake up and have to fight again. I imagine well managed physical pain is similar - you have to make an effort to change your movements to accommodate to your limits, you have to do your physiotherapy exercises. After that you must just accept what pain you can't prevent and work around it. Unlike chronic physical pain, well managed depression has its advantages - it can make you more reflective, empathetic and humble. I'm a kinder, wiser person than I used to be. I'm also much more honest and less self-deceiving than the average person. But I miss the peace and quiet of my pre-depressed life. I no longer expect to recover completely. But that's ok. My life is harder than it would have been but it is still tremendously valuable. Easy contentment would be delightful but hard-won, struggled for joy is valuable too.

Being depressed is not easy to deal with, it completely changes your perception of everything in your life. To be not depressed is to lift the veil of negativity that holds you back from living. This veil contains all of the negative emotions such as sadness, fear and anger. It is hard to lift the veil, but once it is lifted and you get a peak of life without these emotions, you realize how pointless wearing that veil truly is, and how beautiful life is when you look at it through the spectrum of appreciation, excitement, and awe. Everybody is affected by negative emotion, but to not be depressed is to not let these emotions consume your life, and choosing to instead focus on positivity. Every day is a fight against negative thought. To not be depressed is to learn techniques that you can use every day to ensure you are winning that fight. These techniques are different for everybody. For me, I found that being more active and healthy helped, as well as meditating to clear my mind when I find I am being consumed by thought. I also write in a journal to sort out my feelings during times when I am feeling a negative emotion such as fear, anger and sadness. I still feel all of these emotions, but I am not depressed because I have found strategies to help me recover from them super fast.

It's different for everyone, no one feels exactly the same way. I've been personally investigating my own depression and I believe I've always been depressed too. In my better moments though, I see the world through clearer eyes. I feel motivated, encouraged by my peers, and inspired. In these moments, I realize even though I feel the world at a lesser dampened scale - it isn't the end.

Depression makes you feel empty inside. It's not just a matter of feeling awful; it's the feeling that you cannot remember what happy feels like, and that you'll never be happy again. Coming out of depression is like... cracking an eggshell, I suppose. An empty eggshell. First a small crack appears, and you feel the more extreme emotions only, like anger, sadness, grief, and in some cases, excitement. This is a good sign; it's better than the void of not feeling, though it isn't overly fun in itself. Next, more and more cracks appear, and you start feeling more: happiness, discomfort, love, etc. You start to remember your emotional responses to your opinions. When the eggshell is finally broken, you feel more whole; not like a perfect person, yet; that takes a while, but you feel like you're on the way to being fixed, like someone has found all the pieces to the puzzle that is you, and has taped them together where they belong.

I've been depressed for most of my life apart from childhood. No matter what I do it seems to always be there, clouding my mind. I don't know if many of us do know what it's like not to be depressed because really... What is normal? Some of us live in extremes and some of us live without many feelings at all. I keep reading that not being depressed is not crying but I rarely ever cry. I rarely feel anything at all. I think for me if my depression was lifted it would be like a veil of negativity gone. I wouldn't question my judgement, I wouldn't back down from dreams. I would no longer be my worst enemy. But most importantly I would FEEL something again. Hopefully I will one day regain my happiness, optimism and excitement for life.