Depression

I knew the difference.  I knew the difference between when I wanted to kill myself and when I didn’t care if I died.  There would be days when I would give up, I’d crawl into bed, curl up, and just lie there.  This wasn’t me being depressed.  I knew the difference.  Being depressed is when you cry, when you think about a knife to your throat, when you cut yourself, when you wish everything would change, when you cry out for someone...  anyone... to come and tell you everything would be okay.  But no one was there.  No one was ever there.  That was being depressed.  This was depression.  This was the unfeeling, the existence without life.  Curled up, hopeless, useless, on your bed.  It wasn’t that you were sad, don’t get that confused, it’s not when you want to die.  It’s when you don’t care what happens.  You don’t care if someone shoots you or kisses you.  You are without emotion, without thoughts.  Time passes arbitrarily and life moves on without you.  You don’t hear people talk because you don’t exist anymore.

Sometimes, just as I curled up and the life would begin to fade from my eyes, I would be scared.  Just for a second, a flicker of an instant in which I would worry that this time I wouldn’t come back, this time I would never think again.  And then the fear is gone, I am gone, I am in an unstate.  Alone, without thought, not seeing, not breathing.  But it never lasts long, or it hasn’t yet anyways.  Only an hour or two.  And then I begin wake up.  It starts with tears.  Tears that I don’t feel.  Tears that stream from my unblinking eyes and cover the bed I lay in.  And still I don’t feel them even as my face glistens with them and my pillow is drenched in them.  It starts with tears and then, if you are lucky, you fall asleep and you wake up feeling okay.  Okay.  Just okay.  Just barely okay is a better way to describe it.  If you aren’t lucky you begin to wake up and your mind starts screaming at you.  “You are a horrible person.  You are disgusting.  You deserve to die.  Your blood would probably be cold you wretched creature.  You disgust me, crying like a little baby.  No wonder she left, no wonder no one talks to you.  Makes me want to puke.”  And you might just puke.  You might just rock back and forth and cry some more.  You might hold a knife to your throat.  You might cut yourself.  This was being depressed, the most horrible and utmost stage of being depressed, but at least it is not depression.  At least you can feel the pain.  At least you are alive now, even if you wish you weren’t.  Because if you can feel pain then you can still feel happiness when it comes around.  If it comes around.  If you can cry then you can laugh.  Tomorrow you will wake up and it could get better.  At least you are not in depression, at least you have woke from the void.  But it this of course is the part you must work hardest through.  Depression requires no work.  You have to just hope you wake up.  But once you are up you have to work to stay awake.  You have to work to not cut your wrists and not end the misery, work even harder to not fall back into the nothingness.

I think about so many ways of killing myself.  My mind wanders to all of the happy memories I had.  All of the things I no longer have.  All of the laughter and happiness that was wrenched from me.  And I imagine how all of those horrible thoughts would go away if only I had a nail.  A nail and a hammer, straight through the temple.  Maybe stabbing holes in my legs or cut wounds in my arms will ease the thoughts.  The pain will be too much to ignore.  But the thoughts are still there.  They always come back.  Better to just end it.  Gun to the head.  Blade to the throat.  Pills.  Pills are an easy way to go.  But what if I wake up after?  Do I want to wake up?  Oh god, I don’t know, I don’t know.  Where are you, God?  Don’t you exist?  How can I live like this?  And that is when depression will set in if you are not careful.  Because it doesn’t matter what you do or what you're depressed mind tells you, the only way to feel better is to cope.  You have to set aside the pains and sufferings of the past.  It will not be easy.  Worst yet you have to do it alone.  It doesn’t matter what others tell you or how others want to help you because if you don’t believe in the fact that things can get better, that they will get better, then those others cannot help you.

Take a bullet to your head.  Jump into traffic.  Fall of a tall building.  Take the easy way out and you miss out on what could happen.  You miss all the good your life could become if only you believe.  Believe that life will get better if you keep living it.  Believe that you can make it better.  You are strong.  You are independent.  Life will get better because you will make it better.  Nothing anyone says can change that.  Do not let yourself fall into the void or succumb to your mind’s taunting.  How many times have I been there?  In that state of unness?  One hundred?  Two hundred....  I will probably fall into again.  And if life will have me I will wake again.  Hopefully within a few hours.  God, hopefully I won't fall forever.  And when I wake.  When I wake and hold my knees to my chest, and rock and rock and rock, back and forth, the tears streaming down my face.  When I wake I will be strong.  I will believe.