What it takes away, in order

Pleasure goes first, and it goes quietly. Food, company, your own children, the surah you used to love. Still there, still known to be good, and returning nothing.

Then energy. Not tiredness that a night fixes. Something more like every task having a weight attached to it that other people cannot see.

Then thinking slows. Words come more slowly, decisions take three times as long, and you read the same paragraph four times.

And then the last thing, which is the cruellest, because it does not present itself as a symptom. It presents itself as the truth about you. You are lazy. You are ungrateful. You have always been like this. That voice is part of the illness, and it is very good at not sounding like one.