This time last year you would have caught me on my couch. It’s where I spent most of my days watching TV (while simultaneously swiping through TikTok) and eating my feelings. I would like to tell you that I was posted up on the couch for most of the day, but that wouldn’t be exactly true. There was nothing “up” about me. I was postured down on the couch in a deep depression. I even ate in a flattened state, pieces of food falling down my chin in a game of couch cushion pachinko. Both my body and my life were in a state of horizontal limbo for nearly six months after I reached the striking realization that I was not living the life I truly wanted. I had spent the last fourteen years pursuing a career and lifestyle that looked great from the outside but did not fulfill me on the inside. I shot for the moon and I landed… on my couch, constellated amongst the crumbs.

I’ve since come to think of this variety of depression as a “staircase depression.” This is what it looks like in my head: I see myself on a large spiral staircase. Looking upwards, I can see all my hopes and dreams — the truest dreams of my heart. My goals are so close and all I need to do is put in the work of climbing up the stairs towards them. A little farther up the staircase, just out of my line of vision, live the quiet longings of my heart, like the dream of being an artist and a writer. Looking up the spiral staircase I feel light, energized. I feel the siren call of what my heart wants and needs. But it can also feel looming, like the journey is so high to climb it’s overwhelming to think about. Looking down the spiral staircase – away from what my heart really wants and needs – feels dark and suffocating. I feel trapped by the oppressive weight of my unhappiness. Coupled with the long walk up, it feels like every step up is made of sticky taffy. 

This is a middling kind of depression that is as easy to ignore as it is easy to walk down a flight of stairs. This is the stuff of midlife crises – of a long simmering divorce, a sudden departure from a job, or the decision to sell all your possessions to travel the world. The kind of depression that begs for action and change. A change that you know would instantly enliven you, but which can be just as easily resisted by the beliefs, attitudes, and values you inherited from others.

For me, a huge source of resistance is perfectionism. In the context of my depressed state, it can look like avoiding working towards a goal because I can’t achieve it exactly how I imagine the outcome to be. But then, by not working towards my dreams I end up farther down my spiral staircase – which makes me feel more depressed. Which makes me feel like I should do something to help me feel better, only I won’t be able to do it as well as I’d like to because of the depression so maybe I won’t do it after all, which brings me further down the staircase, which…

This cycle got severe enough to the point where I stopped doing daily activities like hygiene, laundry, chores, and even eating because I knew I could not achieve these goals to the best of my previous ability. I am a fantastic cook, and I delight in making whole meals from scratch. My most requested meal is my lasagna — the sauce alone takes 6-8 hours to simmer on the stove. But the outcome is so divine, I once received two marriage proposals after serving my lasagna at a party. (When I reported my outcome to the chef who taught me to make Italian Bolognese sauce, he said getting two marriage proposals was pretty good for an amateur lasagna maker.) Knowing that I am capable of crafting meals of this quality, it somehow felt wrong to serve myself a peanut butter sandwich. So when I didn’t have the energy to order delivery, I would instead go hungry. That’s how big of a perfectionist I am. I would rather starve than create something that is (for my high-achieving standards) sub-par.

But one day I wanted brownies. My brownies are so good you guys. They are the perfect balance between cakey and fudgy, with a soft center and a crispy, crackly top with a fine layer of chopped walnuts on top. On this day that I want brownies, it isn’t for the joy I get when baking them. It isn’t for the state of flow I find myself in when I am cooking – these two feelings are currently inaccessible to me. I’m depressed, remember? I want brownies so I can lay on my couch and eat the entire pan. So me and my couch can eat them. On this day, the desire to be depressed with brownies is stronger than my desire to be depressed without and I find myself in the kitchen. I made a radical decision, something I have never done before. I decided I will not be baking brownies. I instead will be making depression brownies.

There is no need for perfection here – these aren’t brownies I’m making, they are depression brownies. Depression brownies aren’t supposed to be perfect. They are supposed to be kind of sad and pathetic, really. Any brownie made by me in my depression, no matter the outcome, would qualify as a depression brownie because depression is the key ingredient. Flat and chewy? It’s ok. That’s the depression you’re tasting. Burnt crispy edges? I’ve added a bit of depression to this recipe, we’re trying something new. Depression brownies lower the bar of expectation by creating a whole new ball game. My perfect vision of what I know my brownies could be is irrelevant here.

I dump flour, sugar, and cocoa powder into my bowl, eyeballing it because I can’t be bothered to measure. I don’t have powdered sugar (a key ingredient for that crispy upper crust) so I don’t bother. I don’t have eggs either, so I quickly google some substitutions and throw a few spoonfuls of applesauce into the mix. There is no separate bowl for my wet ingredients. I pop a whole stick of butter into the microwave for a few seconds, then plop that in too. I add the walnuts just because I happen to have some. I do not chop. I do not artfully layer them on the top of my batter. I dump the whole bag in. Grease and flour whatever pan happens to be clean, scrape your batter in, and pop it in the oven at 350 degrees. In 30-40 minutes you should have something resembling brownies. Enjoy!

That winter, as I slowly turned myself around and started climbing back up the staircase, I made a batch of depression brownies every week. Every week the brownies were different depending on what ingredients I had on hand and how I was feeling. But the brownies served as more than a comfort food, more than a motivating force. I discovered that my brownies were good no matter what I put in them. They were exactly what I needed at exactly that time in my life. And I learned the difference between what’s perfect and what is good: What’s perfect is always visible, but never within reach – it will always be just a little farther up the staircase than you can climb. Good is relative to where you are on the staircase. It’s the next step up, perfectly within your grasp with just a bit more effort. Perfection feels frustratingly distant. Good feels nourishing and motivating. I can’t tell you that I’ve beaten perfectionism — the ideal world still lives on my staircase. At this moment, I’m struggling with this – my very first blog post – not feeling perfect. But it’s not really a blog post, it’s a depression post. It’s meant to focus me on the good – in a vessel to pour myself into and make something with. And what is good is something delicious to be consumed at any step in the journey.