Depression Just Sucks

Depression sucks. Big time. It sucks so very much. Seriously, I feel like I can’t stress this enough. It is a torturous nightmare. Every single day. And it hurts. Depression hurts a lot and it hurts everything. I mean everything. It hurts emotionally, mentally, and physically. It permeates into every cell of my being and sucks the life from them.

It feels like everything is dark and will never see the light of day again. It feels like I am drowning. My ankles are chained from below keeping me underwater. My arms are caught up in seaweed and nets so that I can’t break free to tread water or swim away. My head is barely above water. I fight to be able to breathe but it’s hard. I get tired very fast from trying to just detangle myself. If I am able to untangle the seaweed and the nets I am still left to fight the chains below from pulling me under.

I am often tempted to just sink and let myself drown. It’s such a hard battle and takes so much energy I don’t know if I will have enough energy left to make it. I’m still not sure. We’ll see.

The day starts with pain. Pain in my head, pain in my heart, and pain in my body. Getting out of bed is a monumental task (if I even get out of bed), every muscle I move feels like torture. My bones ache and I pray my body will be able to carry me. I first hope it will be able to carry me to start the day. I will have to deal with what happens after getting out of bed once I get out of bed.

If I have things to do I will have to work on the strength for those later, when it’s necessary. There’s no point in working on them now because I still have to work on getting out of bed and get moving. It all depends on whether I can gather the strength and keep the pain at bay enough to get things done.

Depression sucks the life out of absolutely everything. Nothing is sacred from depression. Everything is fair game to be crapped on; friends, family, work, home, socializing, interests, hobbies, goals, dreams, plans, attention, focus, concern, care, moving, thinking, feeling, blinking, eating, and even living.

If I was lucky, and I use the term loosely, I might be able to maintain a modicum of functionality. In fact, I was able to maintain this functionality for years. Giving off the illusion that everything in my life was just hunky dory when really it was anything but.

The balance of outside me and inside me overlapped at times but for the most part there was the me that the world saw, and then there was the me that hardly anyone saw. The me that the world saw was capable, attentive, working, engaging, on top of things, and maybe even at times, happy. The me that hardly anyone saw, cried a lot, had dark, upsetting thoughts, uncontrollable, overwhelming emotions, and believed that life just sucked.

I was able to eke out some outside interests for a while but it took a lot of work to maintain them. A lot of things got ignored, avoided, cancelled, and forgotten. I did just enough to make it look good and like I was functioning.

I no longer have two mes. Now it is just the one me, stuck in depression, among other things, and trying to make it through the day.

The depth of depression is astounding. It is sporadic and temperamental. It is tenuous and fragile. It is dysfunctional and destructive. It is traumatic and remorseless. It is relentless and pervasive. It is scarring and fatal. I can wake up feeling okay and on a good path, and mere hours later I could be feeling like suicide is the only way out.

I would say that I hate depression. I hate what it is and what it does. I hate what it takes and what it gives. I hate how it feels and how it lasts. I hate how it changes my thoughts and my moods. I hate that it takes me down. I hate that it feels like it will break me. I hate that it is a part of my life. And I really hate that there is a possibility that it always will be a part of my life. I hate it. I hate all of it.

I think depression can go jump off a cliff, without me.