Marking the Turning Point

October 28, 2025.

Today marks the 4-year anniversary of my first debilitating depressive episode. I’ll never forget waking up after a restless night of sleep and feeling as if every one of my extremities weighed 1,000 pounds apiece.

I couldn’t move.

It took me nearly an hour to reach for my phone just to call Lucas and tell him that I wasn’t well. And even then, I wasn’t able to verbalize the severity of what I was experiencing.

I wasn’t myself.

I was detached. Able to think thoughts but couldn’t feel a thing. I had things I needed to do, but no care to do them. I knew I needed to ask for help, but I had spent the last couple months trying to scream with no sound ever emerging, and it felt as if speaking was the one thing I had tried with absolutely no success.  

I felt silenced.

I remember wrapping myself in a blanket and just staring at the floor. I did this for hours. Around lunch Lucas came to check on me and realized I wasn’t referring to a stomach bug or migraine, but that I was unwell in a way that he had no playbook to understand.

I was inaccessible.

I had attained the unconscious goal of becoming an emotionless robot, and it was a miserable relief. The ultimate state of numb. No emotions. No pressure. No pain. Just the deepest sense of isolation I had ever experienced.  

 That’s when Lucas made me call someone.

I remember that person desperately trying to understand my state of mind and asking me, “It is hopelessness? Do you feel hopeless?”

I remember being surprised by this question, and minutes passed before I could respond.  

I knew enough about depression to recognize that hopelessness was waiting just around the corner — but I hadn’t turned that corner yet. There was still too much evidence in my life to let go of hope completely. Once I realized that, I knew exactly what I needed to say.

But sharing my response was going to cost me. It was going to require energy, I didn’t have to give, just to say the words out loud.

Once I finally found the strength to speak, I said:

“No. It’s not hopelessness. It’s... it’s loneliness. I feel totally and completely alone.”

My body collapsed to the floor.

That’s the moment my journey with depression really began. It’s one thing to tolerate it. It’s another miracle to survive it. But it’s a whole other thing to walk through it.

Navigating depression is a long, exhaustive process. It took time to reteach my heart to feel. For my body to endure. For my soul to risk living again. But it was time well spent.  

This day changed the course of my life — so much so that it’s an anniversary my soul still celebrates. It changed the way I understand myself and the world, and I hope one day it will change even a small part of the world as well.

Every year when the maple trees begin to change, I pause to remember this journey. It was a season of inevitable transformation, but far brighter than I ever anticipated.

Being numb may help you survive pain, but it can keep you from thriving in becoming you. And you are too important to lose along the way.