You probably have a stereotype in mind about depressed people. Closed in body language, not speaking much, not laughing or smiling. Morose, sad, physically inactive. Staring into space, no interest in anything.
Not all of that is too wide of the mark, by and large. Depression, or depressive episodes, do tend to lead to certain behaviours. The obvious caveat there is the word “tend” - not everyone will present in the same way. Another is that certain behaviours may be a tendency in the individual, a sort of baseline, but they aren't completely impervious; being depressed doesn't mean never smiling or laughing at things that should provoke that reaction, especially if it's a book or film or TV show – something you can lose yourself in.
But that's not what I'm writing about here. The point I want to make is valid even if that stereotype were generally accurate, even though it isn't. This is about me, but it's a story that will ring true for a lot of people in similar situations; I haven't done a study or anything, but we crazy people do talk to one another sometimes.
When I suffered a lot of depression as a teenager, I think it was reasonably obvious. I spent much of the time being quiet, looking unhappy, not engaging in much. When I was bullied, I just took it, for the most part. With people I felt comfortable with, I even occasionally mused aloud about methods of suicide (in case you read this, sorry, Chris, for the morbid conversations on the way to off-site PE). I know the friends and teachers noticed, at least some of them, even without such dark musings.
At home, people didn't notice so much. I could hide more, simply by not being around. I would spend time on my own, or buried in books or work.
Somewhere along the line, I learned to be socially functional despite depression. In hindsight, it helped that the depression wasn't constant, and had bits of hypomania in between – but I didn't have a bipolar 2 diagnosis until around age 30, so that's hindsight looking back a long way. But, like many other people dealing with chronic mental ill-health, I learned that I got better outcomes out of life if people couldn't tell what I was feeling.
I learned to act as if I was fine, act gregarious, cheerful. It's not easy, but it gets easier with practice. So now, during a depressive episode, I still need to go out – to the bakery, to the pharmacy, all the little odd jobs that are close enough to do in person and impractical to do online. I go into the little local bakery and I greet the staff cheerfully, I talk to them about the latest developments in their business, or other local independent shops, or politics, or how to get children not to eat sweets (I don't have kids, I just joined in the conversation another customer started). I go to the pharmacy (they know me well, there, unsurprisingly) and chat with them about this, that and the other, I talk to other customers about the difficulties of ordering regular prescriptions from GPs. This is probably somewhere between my baseline behaviour and my hypomanic behaviour, to be honest, but I think I err on being further away from the depression I'm currently experiencing.
I can socialise, and so thoroughly pretend to be fine that I almost fool myself. I will genuinely enjoy company, humour, fun and games – though my enthusiasm will certainly be off from usual, and my sense of humour might be a little off-kilter. I might miss jokes and take them seriously, though I do that when hypomanic as well, at least if taking them seriously appeals to my interests.
Sometimes I'm not up to seeming fine. Most likely, you won't see me when that happens. I'll avoid any interactions with people I'm not prepared to be myself in front of, unless I absolutely can't avoid it. It's so ingrained, so habitual that I don't drop it even at times when I really should, like dealing with doctors.
You might think that this means that pushing myself into these situations would be good for me, that this coping strategy sounds like it is all up-side. Up to a point, it can be good for me, but it's certainly not all upside. That's because there's a real cost to this complete pretence. It is physically and mentally draining, but most insidiously I can't tell how drained I am by it until I hit a limit. If I've not overdrawn my capacity to seem to cope, then I feel fine while I'm doing it – and when it's safe to drop the mask, the weight of it hits me and I feel so drained. But if I hit that limit while I'm out, while the mask is on, it's like the floor dropping out from under me. I try to excuse myself and get away to where I can safely collapse, physically and mentally; once I used to try to kick myself back into it, but it doesn't work, so I just leave if I can. No-one wants a morose guy with a personal rain-cloud at their party.
When that happens, it really takes time to recover, and it does no favours to my overall mood during that episode. It leads to me hating myself, judging myself for the fraud and despising the weakness that I couldn't maintain it.
It's one reason I don't socialise in person so much any more, along with my physical difficulties. It's a risk. So, if you do see me, you probably won't be able to tell if I'm depressed. If you don't see me, it might be that I'm hiding at home because I can't manage to wear the mask, to put on the front – or it might just be that I'm out of the habit of socialising, or that my physical difficulties are getting in the way too much, or even that my caring responsibilities prevent me.