The Hours Between Tears

A Shabbas evening in a quiet room

I woke at one this afternoon, heavy from medication but aware enough to get dressed before the home treatment team arrived. They came quickly, asked their usual questions, wrote a few notes, and left again. When the door closed behind them, the familiar flatness settled in. It felt as if nothing had shifted, and nothing was likely to.

After they left, I tried to do something that might break the stillness. I opened my bedroom door, crossed the landing, went downstairs, and stepped outside onto the first step of the pathway. I stood there for ten seconds in the noise of the crossroads. It was small, but it was something I chose, even if it did not feel as liberating as I hoped. Agoraphobia means that even the briefest exposure feels enormous. All I did was stand outside and come back in to make a meal, but that ten seconds felt like a mountain.

Six months ago none of this would have challenged me. I keep wondering when I will return to myself, when independence will feel possible again, when driving my car or simply being outside won’t carry so much fear. When I will feel wanted. When I will feel held.

When I came back inside, I collected the post from the letterbox and went into the kitchen alone. I heated a microwave meal and stayed there for the full eight minutes it took. The room made me anxious, but I remained until it finished. It didn’t lift my mood or make me feel stronger, but it was still an action, and it was mine.

Only afterwards, when I returned to my room, did everything break open. Two crying spells, both overwhelming and hollowing, the kind that leave you emptied out. When they finally passed, I felt quiet and shaken at the same time.

Now it is Shabbas. The light has thinned into grey. This is usually a time for warmth, for presence, for candles and connection. Instead, I am alone in my room, wishing I felt rooted somewhere, wishing today had been more than a sequence of private battles.

I am writing this because days like this are rarely spoken about. Days where you manage far more than anyone sees, yet none of it brings relief. Days where effort and emptiness sit side by side. This is part of living with severe depression, but it is also part of being human.

As a Jew, I hold onto the idea of pikuach nefesh the principle that saving a life overrides almost every other commandment. Sometimes this means saving your own life in quiet, unseen ways. Our tradition teaches that each person is a universe filled with possibilities. Even when my own universe feels small and collapsed, I try to honour that teaching. I try to keep myself here.

These hours between tears are not dramatic. They are simply the truth of carrying on. And perhaps for now, that is enough.