How do you describe being happy? How do you explain sadness? Or fear? How do you describe these things to someone who has never felt them?
This is is how I feel when someone I love asks me how I’m feeling or asks for an insight into what I’m thinking. It’s not words, it’s just there. A big black cloud over your island that feels for you. It takes the option of joy or peace or happiness or even just nothing.
Being depressed is not only the worst because you literally feel like you’re in a never ending gray storm, but also because you are in this gray storm and you know you just need to step out from under it yet you can’t pick up your foot. You don’t deserve to be out from under this storm, but also, yes you do. You know you do. But it’s so heavy on you you don’t even want to try to move your foot.
Some days you have the gusto to try and open your umbrella and fight against the torrential downpour. You know you’re going to get soaked anyways but you still want to try. You know an umbrella works, after all.
Some days all you want to do is just stand in the storm. You don’t want to fight it, you don’t want to try and control it, you just surrender to it while knowing that that is exactly what you’re doing. You’re giving in. It’s a sweet relief to stop fighting and just be there in it.
Some days, you hope and pray and beg with all your might that the storm will finally just overcome you and drown you and sweep you out to sea. This is the hardest to explain. You know you can keep fighting that umbrella. You know you can even just go on standing in the storm. But even just standing in the storm takes effort. And you don’t want to put even one more little drop of effort into anything. You want to let go.
Each day it goes on and on, pouring down on you. You try to control how you’ll feel each day, but it doesn’t seem to matter what you do, you can’t control how you’ll react. You exercise. You eat healthy. You take your drugs. Your pray. You meditate. You clear your mind. Your let it all out. You get tons of sleep. You talk about it. But still, the next day is always a surprise.
In each of these storms, just across the way, is everyone I love. There aren’t many, but there are the ones I need. The ones who keep me standing, who keep me fighting. As easy and carefree as it would be to just let go and let the storm take me, there are the few who keep me holding on. And I want to let go. I want to be swept away into nothingness. But my love, dim as it may be, anchors me to these people.
Im so sick. I’ve been standing in this storm for far too long. I know that one day I will let go. I’ll just let go and surrender to the rushing sea. I’ll hate myself for it. I’ll wish I could find my way back while also knowing there is no way back. I hope against all hope i don’t get there, that I’ll have a lifeline thrown my way. That someone will see that I’m stuck and toss me a bouy.
In real life, I’m making my way towards a mental health break. A retreat of sorts. I need it. I need it so bad. I’ve got to get help.
Linsey 