My wife and I aren't really sure if she's ever experienced heartburn. I don't remember ever being uncertain about whether I knew what heartburn was -- I have early memories of a very feeling most times I ate Gatto's pizza, as early as I can remember. When you try to relate that experience to someone else, it's oddly hard to describe the character and magnitude of the feeling to her in a way that we are sure that she knows she's felt that. It's like trying to figure out whether someone had every seen the color green who may or may not be colorblind living in a world that also might just not have anything green.

Depression is similar. I'm pretty sure every human has had an experience somewhere away from the edge of the spectrum of depression, whether that feeling was fleeting or endured for years. Some people you talk to can instantly identify what you mean when you describe a wave of depression, but others aren't sure whether or not they understand what you are talking about. When I describe to my wife that I just feel this dark wave of wanting to sob and listen to the same 5 early 2000's slow indie songs on repeat, she looks at me as though maybe what she thought was heartburn was really just gas pain...?

Introspecting on direct experience with these waves has become a source of fascination for me. I live mindfully inside of the wave with the same curious fascination that any good practitioner of mindfulness brings to everyday experience. I also reflect on my ability to do this -- if I can maintain this curiosity, is what I am feeling less severe or different in some way than it is for others? I can still work out in the morning. I can still perform the duties of my job. I also think I might start sobbing (including that weird wobbly feeling in my temples) many times during the day. Periodically I put on my headphones just because I can't face talking to the folks in my house. It's hard for me to believe that anyone would want to spend time with me. I don't want to go on vacation. (Paradoxically for my health) I don't even want to drink. (My normal state of functional alcohol abuse is typically a problem in happier times, even though I almost always drink alone). I don't want to die, but I don't stop myself from imagining how I'd do it. I fantasize about being alone all the time and living alone so that the burden of my persistent unhappiness wouldn't weight so heavily on my 7-year-old daughter's heart. Sadly for me, I know that giving up and being a hermit in the woods is selfish and would hurt those around me. That guilt keeps me in the motion of doing what I do until the wave passes.

You might be thinking, "I know exactly what that's like" or "I can't even begin to relate to any of that" or something in between. You might feel slightly uplifted when you read that last paragraph that someone else knows what it's like or terrible that anyone would ever have to feel that way.

To be honest, I rarely share any of these feelings with my wife. So when I say we are aren't sure whether or not and to what extent she has ever experienced these things, it's like I described heartburn as "my tummy kind of stings".