I have been mind sick since Tuesday evening. It's not quite the mental equivalent of a Windows blue screen, but it came on as suddenly and without warning just like a blue screen. It feels like I am actually sick with the flu, but that I only have the mental symptoms. Since it's happened, I've tried to stay home as much as possible and feed my mind the equivalent of simple and easily digestible food. Even writing this now is taking much longer than it should.
It typically happens at least once or twice a year. One time after I was very sick with the flu, it lasted off and on for several months, although usually it is gone within a week or two. Every time it happens, I am worried that my mind will be gone forever, that I am gone forever. Other than that, it's not all that unpleasant. I don't feel sad, maybe just a little frustrated sometimes when I'm trying to complete a task and can't marshal the correct mental resources. My emotions can have moments of higher volatility initially, but they usually calm down to base levels lower than average. I can be just as happy and susceptible to pleasure by simple things as I am normally. I think this is why I have never thought it was depression.
I have a strong family history of depression. My mother has been medicated off and on and each of my siblings experience it regularly to varying degrees of severity and length. Just last month I was talking to my brother about it. He is a lot like me, always trying to game the system, so when he gets depressed it's always a little surprising to me to see him so weak. It will come every few months or so for a few days. Random things can trigger it like the end of television series he enjoyed or a period of stress, but it just as often seems to have no trigger. I think he gets really sad, despondent even. The last time this happened I remember thinking, it's odd that I am the only one in the family who is not subject to bouts of depression.
And now I feel like this and for the time I wonder, is this my own version of the family depressive model? Seasonal depression? Why does it come and what makes it come?