Despite what most Facebook memes imply, depression is a complicated illness, requiring more than a daily dose of sunshine and positive self-affirmations to endure it. It makes anyone forced to live with it feel like the world’s biggest slacker. With so many remedies available, I feel sure others think I’ve failed to try something, or haven’t tried hard enough, to get better.

I’m tempted to make a t-shirt with all the things I’ve tried listed on the back, like concert dates for a rock band’s world tour, just to save others the time of suggesting them or assuming I haven’t tried everything.

• talk therapy
• group therapy
• virtual therapy
• support groups
• circadian rhythm lamp
• Himalayan salt lamp
• natural light and vitamin D
• essential oils
• CBD oil
• daily walks
• meditation
• self-help books
• self-help podcasts
• daily affirmations
• yoga
• EMDR
• tapping
• chiropractic
• journaling
• prayer
• drink more water
• drink more wine
• more time with friends
• more time with myself
• petting puppies
• volunteering
• trying new hobbies
• resurrecting old hobbies
• staying busy
• and medication

God, the medication. I’ve tried at least five major medications over the years – more, if you factor in the various combinations of those five (cocktails, my doctor calls them). Like the plethora of Facebook memes telling me “happiness is a choice,” there are countless meds I can try, but for every one of them I must go through the trial and error of different dosages (which can take months), weeding through side effects (which ones are manageable and which ones are deal breakers), and the painful process of stepping off the medication if/when I need to change.

Last year, it was clear to me the medication I was on wasn’t working, but every time I talked to my doctor about stepping off of it, she discouraged me. I felt like Lloyd Bridges’ character in Airplane!, when he says “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit (drinking, smoking, sniffing glue . . .).”

She wasn’t wrong. In the 2+ years since my husband yelled, “Plot twist!” I’ve needed every member of the ground crew that lives in my brain to be at the top of her game. But, at the rate I was going, there was never going to be a good time to go through something hard. So, I did what women always do: what needed to be done. I stepped off one medication. Bottomed out. Dragged my ass back out of the pit. Then hit repeat and did that for the second medication. I spent a few weeks drug-free and got back on the merry-go-round with a new medication. Increased the dosage. Increased it again and continue to wait and see if it’s “the one” or if I have to start the whole process over.

Of course, every new decade of my life brings a host of physical changes that have to be accommodated or taken into account when choosing and assessing these medications. Maybe it’s hormonal? Hypothyroidism? Post-partum? Perimenopause? Actual menopause? Maybe it’s just this stage of life? How’s your marriage? How are your children? What kind of stress do you have at work? Didn’t you have Lyme Disease? You’re overweight and you should exercise more, but you should learn to embrace your body as it is.

I envy people who can choose whether or not to be happy. The idea that I’ve had the power to end my own suffering all this time – I just have to choose it – reminds me of those posters that were popular in the 80s. Remember the ones with a sort of kaleidoscope image that you were told to stare at and “relax your gaze” then you’d see the real picture? I never saw more than what was on the surface, no matter how hard I tried. And I promise, I tried. Sometimes, when I was standing with friends, staring at the stupid thing for what seemed like forever, I’d say, “Oh, there it is!” just so everyone would stop waiting for me to see it. It came so easily to everyone else and I never could explain why it didn’t work for me. It just didn’t.

I used to do the same thing around people who believe happiness is a choice – just pretend to be happy. It was easier than explaining why that doesn’t work for me and more socially appropriate than sniping, “You wouldn’t ask someone who has cancer to choose not to have cancer, would you?” Suffering is not a choice. It’s the result of countless things – some chosen, many not – but no one, if given the option, would choose suffering.

I choose not to give into it. I choose to believe I won’t always feel this way. I choose to keep looking for answers, if only so I can give them to my children. Some days, the best I can manage is choose to keep living. Right now, those are my choices. Feel free to slap a sunset behind that and share it on Facebook.