I was severely depressed, self-medicating with alcohol to the point I was bordering on alcoholism (I was in stage 3). The vast majority of the time, I was super lovable when I was drunk. Energetic, funny, I felt great. Sometimes I’d think about some past event (mostly that I’d ruined a great relationship with the most wonderful woman I’ve ever met), or I’d think about how I’d peaked at such a relatively low level in my career, and I’d get really sad and try to kill myself.

When sober, I’d flip between being incapable of leaving bed, and capable of leaving bed but really angry that I had to, so I was very irritable. I did my best to not snap over stuff, but it was a real struggle. In this way, COVID was a benefit to me. We worked 100% remote, and the servers I maintained did nothing critical, so I could sleep a lot during work days (my managers knew I was severely depressed and had been hospitalized over a suicide attempt, so they worked with me a lot, and I’m so lucky to have had such supportive management). I was so deep in this depression that I stopped taking medication because I didn’t think there was any hope. It wasn’t “if,” it was “when” I’d finally kill myself. My intent was to wait for my mom and aunt to die so they wouldn’t have to deal with the sadness. I figured my siblings would be sad, but no one else would care.

Because of all that, I’d get really pissed over the most minor things. I’d lose my shit about the smallest mistakes in traffic—-largely because I was so uncomfortable being out of my home that I was always rushing to get home—-I was constantly yelling in the car. I couldn’t handle any level of irritation.

One day, I accidentally swiped to apple news, and I saw a link to a clip of Anderson Cooper interviewing one of the founders of “loving-kindness” meditation I watched the clip, assuming that it’d be about a bunch of mystical bullshit. I learned that I had some very incorrect ideas about meditation, and so I found some loving-kindness meditations, and started immediate. The beginning of the ones I listened to said to think of someone you love with whom you have no complications in your relationship. That person doesn’t exist for me, and then she said, “it can even be a pet.” I saw my bird’s face so clearly, he’d died about six months before this, and I thought, “he was so happy every day. Everything was an adventure to him. He made the mundane entertaining. He wouldn’t want me to be so sad all the time.” And I started bawling, I had to stop the meditation because I couldn’t hear it anymore. I got it under control and finished the meditation, and for the rest of the day, I felt good.

I did the meditation the next day, and I felt good again, and I remember so vividly leaving the grocery store, and this guy in an Acura SUV in front of me was driving like absolute garbage, like he’d never seen any city before, let alone the one we were in: he had no clue where he was. And I felt like screaming, and I thought, “may I be kind, may I be peaceful, may I be healthy, may I live with ease,” the mantra they have you repeat in loving-kindness meditation. And that snapped me out of the cycle, and freed up my mind to think, “wait, this starts with well wishes to others. That’s a person in front of me. Maybe they’re not from here. Maybe they /are/ just a terrible driver, but maybe driving scares the shit out of them, there’s not much choice but to drive here. I shouldn’t be mad at them, I should be empathetic. They, too, just want to get home.”

I’d been in therapy for years, but refused to see a psychiatrist outside of the time I was forced to see them in the hospital (and I put on a face and lied my ass off to get out of that prison), but I finally saw a psychiatrist to get new antidepressants (I’d previously gotten them from my PCP), and to get whatever other diagnoses and medications he might have for me. I got put on an SSRI, and I maintain a mostly positive mood as long as I don’t stop taking them. That was also difficult and strange to come to grips with the probability that I’ll have to always take depression medication. It felt like failure, but I recently, finally, got over it after a couple of depressive episodes.

The way I see it, though, those four sentences changed my life. I got back with my ex (it wasn’t just breakup grief, she really is the most amazing person I’ve ever met), got a new job with “senior” in the title, and I’m learning new stuff every day at work now. My life is shockingly good now.