Getting better from depression was like that. Missing dimensions popped back up. Plain old normal days tasted crisp and delicious. And then there were the bittersweet replays, when I traveled through the previous months and years, and counted all I’d misheard, misfelt, and missed. Depression isn’t noble or interesting; it’s monotonous, self-absorbed misery that leaves little room for art or kindness or other people.

I’m back, I wanted to shout last spring, that hunched crone was a changeling, not me! I wanted to learn how to get better without running from the site of misery; how to return to people who hadn’t realized I’d been away. I would have liked some scars to point to, to explain my absence. It was shocking, in a way, this drug-borne proof that I’m an animal, washed with chemical tides, turning seasons, light, and food into moods. When you reduce my suffering to a curable disease; to symptoms, postures, and intonations, I’m no longer especially special. All those causes for my sadness fluttered down like snotty Kleenex.

It’s been more than a year since I got sick, and months since I got better. Every day I think of the scientists who mashed up rat brains to create the drugs that brought me back to life, and I’m grateful. And I wish more people could shuck that hollow shell.