Friend

It doesn't matter how many years of my life I've battled with depression, it's always a massive shock when he decides to make an appearance. I'm pounced on by my friend, even before I've opened my mind. Every time he comes along I feel like he has arrived for the first time and don't know how to deal with him. It's always the same merry-go-round. I blame things that are happening in my life. I try to work out what it is...... is it Work? Relationships? Family? The environmentally challenged planet we live on? It's mostly the latter and the denial I usually walk with has disappeared. We are doomed! I try and fix things that aren't  actually broken, but they feel like they are.... Wrong and broken. Nothing feels right. I feel sick and scared.

I start exercising, over exercising, scrabbling for those endorphins that usually make me feel better..... After that refreshing post run shower, things feel just a little better... but then just like the come down after drugs, there is that nothing feeling back again.  There are times I've wanted to feel nothing....but this is on another level of nothingness.

The acting begins.... I can't let ANYONE see me like this... I am weak if I show it. I'm embarrassed and I feel guilty and dirty..... if I act maybe I will trick myself into thinking I'm ok. This is the hardest part and it's totally exhausting keeping up the façade. By the time I get home I have nothing left. Nothing left for the apparent love of my life, my daughter. Imagine feeling nothing for you own flesh and blood? She comes in for a hug... I can't feel her love, I can't feel my own.

I just want to be on my own so I can stop acting... But I can't be, I have responsibilities.  Maybe my family and friends would be better off without me and me without them. I feel paranoid... anxious.  I'm walking around with dark glasses on. Everything looks and feels dark and that darkness has leaked into my soul, spreading its poison. 
I think about getting my SAD lamp out or moving to another country.  Yes that is the answer I'm sure... Get in the loft, dust the lamp off. It sits there for days not being turned on.

I'm making everyone's life a misery... Some people understand, most don't... My mother tells me to pull myself together. I retreat even further.  I'm glad in some ways that they don't understand. That would mean they suffer too. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy....well maybe I would if this in itself wasn't it.

What have I to be depressed about? There are people 1000 times worse off. How pathetic am I? And then, just like that, like nothing ever happened I wake up one day and my friend is gone. What was all the fuss about? I'm back to normal but everyone around me is like "what the actual fuck? Yesterday you wanted to kill yourself and now you're dancing around the kitchen expecting us all to just forget about the fact you've been a difficult cow for the past few weeks"
 
Yes please, just forget about it... because I am.