Depression and Me

Imagine this...

You're alone at 3am on a Saturday night, reading an article on Buzzfeed about the most recent celebrity scandal. It is raining outside and your cat is snuggling peacefully beside you. Suddenly, you hear a terrible sound. The most gut wrenching sound you have ever heard in your entire life. Do you know what that sound is? Absolute Silence. I do not simply mean silence around you or outside. I mean the silence you get in your head, when you have no thoughts. When your mind is on the precipice of an existential crisis.

You might know what I mean if you suffer from anxiety or depression. It is a silence that is so deafening, everything around you starts to blur and fade away. Quickly, you try and think of something, anything to derail this tidal wave of nothingness that is about to descend on your peaceful Saturday night. Alas, your mind remains empty, a blank space. Your lungs begin to fill with air, too much. You want to exhale but there is something blocking it. Your tongue that suddenly feels too big, your mouth that refuses to open. Since your brain has ceased all communication with your body, there are no neurones firing commands, demanding you do what is basic human instinct. To breath. To inhale. To exhale. There is nothing but this growing pressure that feels like an elephant, sitting on your chest.

Without knowing it, you have just slipped into an anxiety attack. Fuelled by the Nothing that inhabits the deepest crevice of your mind. It lurks there, waiting to swarm your thoughts and drown you. Do you want to know the name of this Nothing that I have been forced to share my mind and soul with? Depression. This is my darkness. This is what I dread when I am alone.

Finally, after a tumultuous battle between my body against itself. I am left with the Depression and this time, it speaks.

'Why are you just sitting here?', 'What are you doing with yourself?', it says.

I reply " It's 3am, what do you expect me to do?",

'Anything.''Do something useful for once in your pathetic life', it tells me.

'Do you think you mean something? Do you think you are worth anything to anyone? Ha! You are a joke.'

"Why are you here? Why have you invaded my mind?" I cry

'No one wants you here..." It whispers and then silence again.

No matter how irrational and unnecessary it is. I end up listening. I question what I am doing. I question my existence. I question my purpose.

My depression is not my friend. It is an intruder. It was not invited. Somehow, somewhere along the way of my childhood and preadolescent life, it invited itself in... or I accidentally left a door open. Trusted someone. Believed in something, unbelievable. Wanted love and got malice. Wanted kindness and got cruelty. I understand that everyone has their own darkness. Their own Demons. No one is perfect. Especially not a Parent.

My whole childhood was a blur. A constant moving picture, jumping from one scene to another without a moments break. I'd call it a Drama. You can call it life. I was forced to mentally grow up by the age of 7 years old. When my parents started using me as the messenger and mediator for their brutal, verbal and physical wars. I was in a constant state of unrest. Waiting for the next blowout or explosion. When it happened, I grabbed my brothers, shielding them in a room so they wouldn't witness the ugliness at their young ages and then I had to stop one parent from murdering the other. You may think, I'm being dramatic and everything must've seemed that way at that age. I kid you not, I have the scars to prove it.

Post adolescence. I struggle making friends and keeping them. I struggle being around people. I used to want to be alone. I used to crave the peace and quiet. Now I can't stand being alone for too long, because then, the silence creeps in. My life is a rollercoaster ride, I didn't want to get on. I am forced to depend on the people who replaced my childhood with their drama. When I say forced. I mean mentally. Meaning, I am terrified of ever leaving their cage. I am terrified that I am so damaged that I will not be able to get better and there is no one on this planet who will ever love or tolerate me.

I feel like I am looking at my life through a blurry window. Fragments, I am able to make out but the rest remains unrecognisable. My Depression has warped my vision. Making everything dull and misty. I am lost, walking on a long road with no goal, stumbling through my life, running away from something that I can never escape from. Sometimes I can be happy, I think. Sometimes I can put up a facade. It is so easy for people to believe. Facades. Maybe my darkness is my fault. Maybe it was born through my inability to live and be happy. Everyone says, be grateful. I am grateful. I am very grateful that I haven't succumbed to the desire to get off the rollercoaster ride. I am very grateful that I have not yet been submerged by the nothingness. I can still reach my hand out and wave, waiting from someone to grab hold or throw me a life jacket.

So I sit alone at night at 3am on a Saturday. I cry, I stare at a blank screen. I listen to the rain, the sound a beautiful melody lulling me to sleep. Whispering a calm I can never keep and I wait for the Nothingness to visit me again tomorrow.