Explaining My Depression

My depression is a shape shifter. One day it is as small as a firefly in the palm of a bear, the next it’s the bear. On those days I play dead until the bear leaves me alone. I call the bad days the dark days. People say try lighting candles. When I see a candle, I see the flesh of a church, the flicker of a flame sparks of a memory younger then noon, and I am standing beside an open casket. It is the moment I learn every person I ever come to know will someday die.

Besides, I’m not afraid of the dark. Perhaps that’s part of the problem.

People assume that the problem is you can’t get out of bed. I can’t. Anxiety holds me a hostage inside of my house, inside of my head. Where did anxiety come from? Anxiety is the cousin visiting from out of town depression felt obligated to bring to the party. I am the party. Only I am a party I do not want to be at.

People suggest: why don’t you try going to actual parties, see your friends. Sure, I make plans. I make plans but I don’t want to go. I make plans because I know I should want to go. I know sometimes I would have wanted to go; it’s just not that much fun having fun when you don’t want to have fun.

You see, each night, insomnia sweeps me up in its arms. Insomnia has this romantic way of making the moon feel like perfect company. When people say: try counting sheep, my mind can only count reasons to stay awake at night. So I go for walks, but my stuttering kneecaps remind me I am sleep walking on an ocean of happiness that I cannot baptise myself in.

They say happiness is a decision. But my happy is as hollow as a pin pricked egg; my happiness is a high fever that will break. My parents say I am so good at making something out of nothing and that flat out asks me if I am afraid of dying.

NO… I am afraid of living!

I am lonely. I think I learnt it when my parents split; how to turn the anger into lonely, the lonely into busy so when I say I have been super busy lately, I mean I have been falling asleep watching cartoons on the couch to avoid confronting the empty side of my bed, but my depression always drags me back to my bed. I lay there listening to the hallow auditorium of my chest, swooning with echoes of a heartbeat, but I am a careless tourist here; I will never truly know everywhere I have been

No seems to one understand.

Can’t you see? … Neither do I!

From the words of Sabrina Benaim who spoke the lyrics of my own heart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqu4ezLQEUA