On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living

by Alan Noble

We can set it on a table, examine it, and communicate it to others: I am not depressed. I have depression. It is over there and I am over here. My experience has a listing in DSM-5. I can name it. So, maybe it’s manageable after all? Except that mental suffering is never “over there.” It can’t be. By its nature, mental suffering is always experienced subjectively, inside us. And at best, that experience can only be communicated to others in figurative language. “It feels like I’m drowning. Like I’m detached from my body. Like everything is much darker than it used to be.” Remarkably, we can even struggle to communicate an episode of mental illness to ourselves once we are past it. The memory remains but not the experience of it. How can something so intensely intimate and vivid become so alien to us?