the decline

When it starts you might just think you are having a bad day, which sucks.  But when you wake up the next day and it's still there you try to think your way out. By the third day you dwell a little too much in the shaded places of your brain, there is comfort there. 

As the week goes on, you start to see a pattern. You might reach out to friends to check on them because, well for me at least, it gives me a feeling of control and listening to them helps me not focus on what my brain is doing. It's a form of denial, that the decline isn't happening and I will snap out of it. More and more I start to isolate. After a week or so I might wake up and just cry at 4am;  I start to feel like there is no need to go all the way in and start thinking of ways to escape. Those ways lately often include not being around to feel absolutely nothing, because feeling nothing is way worse than feeling "depressed" and I don't want to feel nothing at all. I get scared. Almost desperate. I hate using that word, because it's not at all how I like to describe myself, shit, I am a strong woman, but more than that I am honest with myself, which I guess is a strength. I do, however, punish myself with lies. I am selfish, a bad mom, lazy... the list goes on and on. I get angry at myself for not being stronger than this depression that is taking over my whole life.

 My body is sore now because I am so tense. My jaw clenches when I am asleep, so hard it wakes me up. My back aches, and toes feel intense pain first thing in the morning. Eating gets harder and harder. Where there was once color I now see only shades of grey. Like an icy morning, if there is color it is dull and muted. There is no living in this, now it is all just about survival. Do I even want to survive?

Truth: I like myself. I am a good friend, I have great conversations with people I interact with. I am smart and inquisitive. I listen well and admire people who challenge my way of thinking. I feel like I am pretty and look good for my age. I am a hard worker and I challenge myself. I am admired by my friends and peers. I am confident and competent. I do not allow people to talk down to me. I know when to have the hard conversations and I know when to walk away. So why the fuck am I depressed, why do I spiral out of control. 

To the rest of the world I look and act like a normal human being, in control, calm and confident; inside I am battling a demon I have no control over. The whole world is slowed and I am 2 people in one body. Am I an imposter? Am I safe from my demons? Do the demons really exist or am I just making excuses for my own thoughts?

Somedays I just want to escape it all and it can play out one of 2 ways. The first looks like me living in a tiny house by myself, in the woods, in a place where no one knows me. I might have a dog or a cat to keep me company... a clean state. The thing I don't account for is that I can't escape depression. Depression lives inside me, woven in every fiber of my being. It has a grip on my life like stage 4 cancer.  So the second way, is death. I have played both scenarios out in my head over and over, but neither is an option. Which is why I then turn to punishing myself for having those thoughts.  I'm so selfish!

 I want to scream and cry but the depression has now muted everything, I am it's prisoner, and this is just the ride down. The bottom is coming...