“Depression, for many of us, is not dysfunction — it’s remembering.”
There are some aches we learn to live with before we ever learn to name them.
And by the time we do, they’ve already shaped the way we love, lead, work, and rest.
Sometimes it doesn’t look like pain.
It looks like scrolling past joy because you’re too tired to feel it.
It looks like saying “I’m fine” when you haven’t been for months.
It looks like doing everything right — and still feeling like something essential never arrived.
I remember standing in the kitchen one morning, staring at the sink, unable to move.
Nothing dramatic had happened.
No crisis.
Just the quiet realization that I felt… nothing.
No joy. No grief. No desire.
That’s when I knew something had left me — and I wasn’t sure how to call it back.
The Quiet Emergency is a reflection on one of those aches —
a slow-burning inheritance passed down through silence, masked as strength, and now surfacing as exhaustion, depression, and disconnection.
It’s not a diagnosis. It’s a remembering.
And maybe, a way forward.