I suffer from chronic depression. In the 28 years since it manifested I’ve found that exercise, working too much, and finding any excuse to get out of the damned house have been the only treatments that work. The isolation of the past two years has not been kind; if 2020 softened me up, 2021 put me down for the count. I entered December alone, jobless, and in the detox facility at Mclean Hospital.  

I start the new year sober, humbled, and hungry. There are things I’ve lost I can never get back. But there’s also stuff that’s just misplaced. Maybe the biggest is a sense of purpose, an answer for that meddlesome “but what am I actually doing here” question. 

One of the more insidious things about depression is how difficult it is to fight for oneself. On the flip, fighting for others isn’t. So for the next four months, the tough question has an answer: I'm here to fight for the grandmother I lost to cancer, for the stepmother I didn’t lose but could’ve, for the moments I’ve lost because I couldn’t get out of bed or the bottle. While I’m at it, maybe I’ll find some of what I've misplaced.