Need to say this:
"Please don't ask me why I'm sad, I'm sad, because you had to ask."
I do not suffer from depression because of something. It is not an accute malaise which I can pin-point, nor possessing of a specific time frame to which I can think back and say, "Ah-hah, that's where it all started." And I can't point to my body and say "this is where it hurts" -- unless you can point to the heart that is buried beneath the arteries, and has nothing to do with muscle.
It simply, is.
It just... I need to say this. Somewhere. To someone, who can't or won't argue with me. If there was a why that I could seriously point to, I'd be MORE than happy to! And it's so... exhausting, explaining this to people, even after I've explained about the whole, diagnosis.. depression... thing. I just want to say "today is a bad day" and not have to explain. Because it's so painful trying to make it make sense -- it never does, btw -- and re-explain how long and that there's nothing specific and no I can't just 'cheer up.' It makes me ill.
It's a hopelessness. A sense of just being so overwhelmed by every-day life that the only thing I really feel up to is crawling back into bed. And it.. it sneaks up on me. Some days I just wake up and feel, 'no, this is just going to be a bad day.' And sometimes I don't and instead it just hits me halfway through the day like a train I didn't see coming even though looking back it seemed to be a slow process and then all of a sudden I'm crying in the car and I don't even know why.
Or it's just a general, dull listlessness.. A malcontent that just simply prevents me from being satisfied, or really being able to just feel 'happy.' It doesn't always come in a great wave, it's usually quiet, like the cold that seeps in under a leeky door, that you can't notice until after your toes are frozen.
It's the staring out the window with your hand pressed against the glass wondering what's between you and the rest of yourself, and the rest of the world. It's the hazy fog in your head that you don't even notice has followed you all the way to the grocery store, until you get up to the cash register and the woman behind the counter smiles and asks how you are, and you smile back, and realize it feels forced, and it hurts your heart that it's such a lie when you say "I'm good." ...
It's listening to music that you love and having it pull so hard at your strings that suddenly there are tears running down your cheeks before you even had a chance to register that it was going to happen, let alone why. It's looking around at all the millions of tiny tasks I have to do each day, and only being able to see that it's such a huge, insurmountable list, that I can't get started. I can't see that if I just do this room here, this load of laundry, and these few dishes, eventually it will be finished. I only see how horribly long, long, long... the page is and can't imagine crawling over to the other side.
I would never have said I was 'suicidal,' but there are often times when that heavy cloud is followed by the thought that I wish I just didn't have to deal with all of it anymore. And the part that terrifies me is that it doesn't automatically scare me. Just being... tired, of the whole thing, of worrying about all of it seems like such, a hassle. There are moments that I stare longingly for a second too long at the opposite side of the street and the oncoming traffic, or an over-large tree on the side of the road, and I look at my hands on the wheel, and wonder. More than once I have tripped on the stairs and had my pulse catch as it occured to me how beautifully simplistic it would have been if I had tumbled down and my skull crashed into the sharp edge of the wall at the bottom.
There are minutes that stretch into days spanning weeks that I wish I could just go to sleep and not wake up, but just fade quietly into the night where nobody could mind. There are flashes off the blade of kitchen knife as it moves up and down cutting through an apple as I slice it and I sort of wonder if it's possible to make it hurt enough to stop. Not to stop the action, just to stop the never-ending dried up well inside my chest from engulfing the rest of me. Is there a point where the pain on the outside overrides the pain on the inside...? I can imagine what the psychiatrist, or even a saner, less lost me, would say. But I do wonder...
Lately I've seriously considered committing myself -- for what? I have no idea. But then I remember all the responsibilities that I'm supposed to have and am failing at, and the fact that I have no one to take care of them, and I feel bad for even considering it. I know, vaguely -- or I hope, rather -- that I would never do these things. Or at least the ones that people want to call 911 over. I want to cry, for suggesting it, because it's not what I meant. And it's such... poetic justice, to think that if I ever did manage to kill myself it would have been a complete accident. Accidental overdose -- can you overdose on self-pity....?
Hello, life? If you happen to find someone, will you ask them to send you back? I sort of miss you. But I guess if you're out having a good time and don't really miss me then I understand, I probably should just let you go... But if you 'did' happen to be missing me, and just got lost on the road somewhere, well, I wanted you to know: I'll be here waiting for you.
...And it's downing three glasses of wine every night and not even noticing until I can't really see straight and thinking, "huh, at least I can smile now without that godawful forced fakeness. And now I don't feel so bad about crawling into bed and passing out."
(I don't want this to be a cry for help. I know that I need help. I don't want this to be a plea for attention or false threat -- it isn't. I just need, to admit, outloud--in text, rather, some of the things that rarely if ever make it past the darkness in my head.)
I do not suffer from depression because of something. It is not an accute malaise which I can pin-point, nor possessing of a specific time frame to which I can think back and say, "Ah-hah, that's where it all started." And I can't point to my body and say "this is where it hurts" -- unless you can point to the heart that is buried beneath the arteries, and has nothing to do with muscle.
It simply, is.
It just... I need to say this. Somewhere. To someone, who can't or won't argue with me. If there was a why that I could seriously point to, I'd be MORE than happy to! And it's so... exhausting, explaining this to people, even after I've explained about the whole, diagnosis.. depression... thing. I just want to say "today is a bad day" and not have to explain. Because it's so painful trying to make it make sense -- it never does, btw -- and re-explain how long and that there's nothing specific and no I can't just 'cheer up.' It makes me ill.
It's a hopelessness. A sense of just being so overwhelmed by every-day life that the only thing I really feel up to is crawling back into bed. And it.. it sneaks up on me. Some days I just wake up and feel, 'no, this is just going to be a bad day.' And sometimes I don't and instead it just hits me halfway through the day like a train I didn't see coming even though looking back it seemed to be a slow process and then all of a sudden I'm crying in the car and I don't even know why.
Or it's just a general, dull listlessness.. A malcontent that just simply prevents me from being satisfied, or really being able to just feel 'happy.' It doesn't always come in a great wave, it's usually quiet, like the cold that seeps in under a leeky door, that you can't notice until after your toes are frozen.
It's the staring out the window with your hand pressed against the glass wondering what's between you and the rest of yourself, and the rest of the world. It's the hazy fog in your head that you don't even notice has followed you all the way to the grocery store, until you get up to the cash register and the woman behind the counter smiles and asks how you are, and you smile back, and realize it feels forced, and it hurts your heart that it's such a lie when you say "I'm good." ...
It's listening to music that you love and having it pull so hard at your strings that suddenly there are tears running down your cheeks before you even had a chance to register that it was going to happen, let alone why. It's looking around at all the millions of tiny tasks I have to do each day, and only being able to see that it's such a huge, insurmountable list, that I can't get started. I can't see that if I just do this room here, this load of laundry, and these few dishes, eventually it will be finished. I only see how horribly long, long, long... the page is and can't imagine crawling over to the other side.
I would never have said I was 'suicidal,' but there are often times when that heavy cloud is followed by the thought that I wish I just didn't have to deal with all of it anymore. And the part that terrifies me is that it doesn't automatically scare me. Just being... tired, of the whole thing, of worrying about all of it seems like such, a hassle. There are moments that I stare longingly for a second too long at the opposite side of the street and the oncoming traffic, or an over-large tree on the side of the road, and I look at my hands on the wheel, and wonder. More than once I have tripped on the stairs and had my pulse catch as it occured to me how beautifully simplistic it would have been if I had tumbled down and my skull crashed into the sharp edge of the wall at the bottom.
There are minutes that stretch into days spanning weeks that I wish I could just go to sleep and not wake up, but just fade quietly into the night where nobody could mind. There are flashes off the blade of kitchen knife as it moves up and down cutting through an apple as I slice it and I sort of wonder if it's possible to make it hurt enough to stop. Not to stop the action, just to stop the never-ending dried up well inside my chest from engulfing the rest of me. Is there a point where the pain on the outside overrides the pain on the inside...? I can imagine what the psychiatrist, or even a saner, less lost me, would say. But I do wonder...
Lately I've seriously considered committing myself -- for what? I have no idea. But then I remember all the responsibilities that I'm supposed to have and am failing at, and the fact that I have no one to take care of them, and I feel bad for even considering it. I know, vaguely -- or I hope, rather -- that I would never do these things. Or at least the ones that people want to call 911 over. I want to cry, for suggesting it, because it's not what I meant. And it's such... poetic justice, to think that if I ever did manage to kill myself it would have been a complete accident. Accidental overdose -- can you overdose on self-pity....?
Hello, life? If you happen to find someone, will you ask them to send you back? I sort of miss you. But I guess if you're out having a good time and don't really miss me then I understand, I probably should just let you go... But if you 'did' happen to be missing me, and just got lost on the road somewhere, well, I wanted you to know: I'll be here waiting for you.
...And it's downing three glasses of wine every night and not even noticing until I can't really see straight and thinking, "huh, at least I can smile now without that godawful forced fakeness. And now I don't feel so bad about crawling into bed and passing out."
(I don't want this to be a cry for help. I know that I need help. I don't want this to be a plea for attention or false threat -- it isn't. I just need, to admit, outloud--in text, rather, some of the things that rarely if ever make it past the darkness in my head.)