depression.
I'm 100% sure I'm depressed.
I feel like I’m in a box with a pinhole view of the outside world. I was okay with being in the box for a little while. But now it’s getting harder to breathe. Slowly, I discover, the air is being sucked out of the box. Replacing the space the air once took up is an inconceivable amount of pressure. It’s like one lucky sucker punch that knocks the wind out of you. No, it’s more like a penny falling from a tall building. Actually, it’s the force of at least a thousand car crashes. Maybe it’s more like hitting the ground after an infinite nightmare free fall? Whatever it is, it’s a vacuum of crushing sadness.
You could say that I created the box. I carefully lined up the edges and glued them together just right. I meticulously cut the perfect circular pinhole just large enough for the smallest glimpse. I lowered the box over myself and sealed my own damn fate. You could say I wanted this.
Bur I didn’t want this. It’s a person in emotional poverty shielding themselves from waves of self-righteous martyrdom and manipulation. It’s assuming the worst of people. It is knowing no one is coming to your rescue. It’s saving yourself. It’s floating along in your overturned box when the storm hits and ships sink around you. It’s squeaking by unnoticed in a sea of debris. It’s like thinking out loud, “I don’t want to die and but I have no idea how to survive this.”
I have been avoiding my family. I have been avoiding most of my friends. I'm a caretaker and mother to my family. My friends just don't get it and offer passing glances of hopefulness, but nothing meaningful. I am alone and I have no idea where I am. I scream at the top of my lungs in my car on long night drives because I don't want anyone to see me ask for help and I don't know how to otherwise anymore when everyone ignores the root of my needs.
I've been spending a lot of time looking at myself and wishing I could break my mirror of self reflection. I think I hate myself. I know I'm my own worst enemy. Most days I hear my mother's voice in my head swaying between telling me she loves me and is proud of me and she wishes she could be here and how have I let myself go and why aren't I working harder and why am I with Neil and silently getting upset I haven't called in a while. I hear footsteps pacing to the heater and I take two steps at a time to get to my room at the top of the stairs. I feel her around me all the time for better and for worse. I expect the rattle of my bedroom door when the vacuum bats against it on a weekend morning, eight years and a thousand miles away.
I feed the demons inside me all the time. I pay attention to their needs and keep them neat in a row. I acknowledge them and understand them, my misbehaving children, though they linger like unwanted houseguests. They hang around my soul just ghosts in a haunted home. Sometimes I believe them and sometimes they're a part of me, so separation doesn't come easy. They laugh and scream and tease and make me feel something.
Neil told me I should want to feel even if it's anger or sadness because I can't always expect sunshine and a thunderstorm is better than gray skies. I would rather not feel a thing. Getting through the day takes twice the energy if I let myself feel and these fourteen hour days aren't getting any shorter or less regular. When I work, the rest of the world falls away and I can have focused repetition and clock out of everything else, lining up code and keeping spreadsheets. I often wonder what days would be like if you could spill coffee inside of a computer screen. I often wonder what days would be like if I could reach out and touch something real in front of me.
I feel like I’m in a box with a pinhole view of the outside world. I was okay with being in the box for a little while. But now it’s getting harder to breathe. Slowly, I discover, the air is being sucked out of the box. Replacing the space the air once took up is an inconceivable amount of pressure. It’s like one lucky sucker punch that knocks the wind out of you. No, it’s more like a penny falling from a tall building. Actually, it’s the force of at least a thousand car crashes. Maybe it’s more like hitting the ground after an infinite nightmare free fall? Whatever it is, it’s a vacuum of crushing sadness.
You could say that I created the box. I carefully lined up the edges and glued them together just right. I meticulously cut the perfect circular pinhole just large enough for the smallest glimpse. I lowered the box over myself and sealed my own damn fate. You could say I wanted this.
Bur I didn’t want this. It’s a person in emotional poverty shielding themselves from waves of self-righteous martyrdom and manipulation. It’s assuming the worst of people. It is knowing no one is coming to your rescue. It’s saving yourself. It’s floating along in your overturned box when the storm hits and ships sink around you. It’s squeaking by unnoticed in a sea of debris. It’s like thinking out loud, “I don’t want to die and but I have no idea how to survive this.”
I have been avoiding my family. I have been avoiding most of my friends. I'm a caretaker and mother to my family. My friends just don't get it and offer passing glances of hopefulness, but nothing meaningful. I am alone and I have no idea where I am. I scream at the top of my lungs in my car on long night drives because I don't want anyone to see me ask for help and I don't know how to otherwise anymore when everyone ignores the root of my needs.
I've been spending a lot of time looking at myself and wishing I could break my mirror of self reflection. I think I hate myself. I know I'm my own worst enemy. Most days I hear my mother's voice in my head swaying between telling me she loves me and is proud of me and she wishes she could be here and how have I let myself go and why aren't I working harder and why am I with Neil and silently getting upset I haven't called in a while. I hear footsteps pacing to the heater and I take two steps at a time to get to my room at the top of the stairs. I feel her around me all the time for better and for worse. I expect the rattle of my bedroom door when the vacuum bats against it on a weekend morning, eight years and a thousand miles away.
I feed the demons inside me all the time. I pay attention to their needs and keep them neat in a row. I acknowledge them and understand them, my misbehaving children, though they linger like unwanted houseguests. They hang around my soul just ghosts in a haunted home. Sometimes I believe them and sometimes they're a part of me, so separation doesn't come easy. They laugh and scream and tease and make me feel something.
Neil told me I should want to feel even if it's anger or sadness because I can't always expect sunshine and a thunderstorm is better than gray skies. I would rather not feel a thing. Getting through the day takes twice the energy if I let myself feel and these fourteen hour days aren't getting any shorter or less regular. When I work, the rest of the world falls away and I can have focused repetition and clock out of everything else, lining up code and keeping spreadsheets. I often wonder what days would be like if you could spill coffee inside of a computer screen. I often wonder what days would be like if I could reach out and touch something real in front of me.