I’ve been trying to figure out how to describe how it feels to be depressed.
First I want to share that as a depressed person it’s a bit strange when people talk to me like I’m just a typical person because it feels like it’s so obvious that I’m not okay. I feel like I should look like someone who just walked out of a natural disaster. If I looked the way I feel I’d be burned and bleeding, covered in ash. My clothes would be shredded. My hair a gigantic tangle and dirt smeared all over my skin. On my face would be shock and bewilderment. Other people should be rushing over to carry me to safety. But no one seems to notice. It’s just one of the many mind fucks involved with depression.
If I imagine a gigantic round fish bowl on my head then sound would be muffled and distorted- unless it was my sound which would bounce around on the inside walls of my head gear fish bowl. I’d smell my own breath and hear my own sounds but no one else would. That sums part of this up. There is a sensory component. Like a lot of stuff is hyper real but then other stuff is distant and like a low buzz. So it’s either in the fish bowl or outside of it.
But there is also this emotional paralysis involved. If I also had an IV attachment somewhere I couldn’t access to remove or control and there was just the slowest drip of some kind of paralysis drug dripping down every now and then. Enough to make my breath catch but not enough to kill me. So I have to remind myself to exhale. It makes getting out of the car difficult. I pretend I’m hearing one more song or listening to an interesting news story. But the truth is that I’m really just trying so very hard to summon the energy to go out into a world where no one can sense the devastation I’m limping away from. Every movement is a gigantic effort. Gigantic.
I remind myself to stick with the routine because i know that if I just keep plugging along eventually the depression will lift- like that video where the raccoon tries to wash the cotton candy in the stream- it’ll be gone. In a snap. The stream will just absorb it and keep moving- that life stream. It never stops. It keeps going and one day I’ll be able to lower my cotton candy to it and whoosh. I’ll look up with an empty hand and everything will be reset. Back to normal. Another chance to really live. I’ll grab the bull by the horns. Seize the day. Whatever.
Sent from my iPhone
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