Depression

Where does it come from? How does it creep up on you so suddenly and randomly? No matter what kind of day you have or what kind of day you had the day before. Irrespective of what the weather is doing outside. That black hole deep within you just opens up and swallows you into it whole. Every negative thought you can think or slight niggling worry you may have perhaps had a glimmer of before, becomes all you can think about. It drains you of all your energy. Simply walking the dog feels too much even on the calmest most beautiful of days: on the days when you just want to curl up and no longer exist, but knowing you should be making the most of the day, the weather. You don’t want to eat, breathe, live, laugh or love. You don’t even want to cry despite those tears falling from your eyes.

You argue with yourself. You know those thoughts aren’t necessarily true – or not all of them – that they are just out of reach of you being able to sensibly control them. And you wonder what difference all the therapy in the world could possibly make when you feel this way, to stop you feeling this way. And then you give up and just allow them to envelope you because you have no energy left to do anything at all, let alone fight yourself.

You discover that you aren’t as strong as you think you are. You’re no longer glad that it’s you struggling with this and not one of your friends – because you are strong enough to fight this – because you realise that you are not strong enough. You wonder how much more of this you can take, how much more you can keep fighting. You have plans to meet a friend that you just cannot handle, but you don’t cancel. You push yourself through it because you refuse to be one of those people who cancels or flakes out at the last minute. You refuse to let anyone down. Anyone accept yourself. Making further future plans feels like an impossibility because what if you feel like this and just do not want to leave the house?

You struggle to function. I have no idea how I have not had a serious accident. How I haven’t hurt myself or someone else because I am completely and utterly dissacociated from life, the world, my own body. This morning I actually drove on the wrong side of a (fortunately quiet, country) road – because for a minute I completely and utterly forgot that that was not the side we drove on. It didn’t hit me until another car headed toward me pulled into the passing point that I was about to pull into; because it was on their side of the road, not mine.

And yet the day outside is beautiful and still. The world carries on around you, unawares.