Exhausting

"I don’t know what it’ll feel like to be free of depression. The only times I remember being free of it is on the edge of my earliest childhood memories. Too long ago to recall the feeling. But for years now I haven’t been free. Even on good days, when my thoughts are almost entirely positive and I’m confident in myself, I can feel it. On those days it feels like a soft murmur in the back of my skull. Quiet, but present. And I know that something will happen (a bit of bad news, or a loss) and it’ll turn into a scream and pull me in and surround me.

Things are better now than they’ve been before, but often managing the symptoms is hard. Figuring out ways to cope, self-care strategies, treatments. The hardest thing has been learning to cope alone. Sometimes I’m alone because no one has time, but sometimes I’m alone because the depression tells me no one would care in the first place. That I shouldn’t reach out, cause I’ll just get burned, turned away. After all it’s happened before. And why should I risk more pain when I’m already hurting?

That’s how I lost my best friend. I needed him to be there, but he didn’t think I was worth dealing with. My depression wasn’t worth dealing with. Ten years of friendship wasn’t worth sticking around to help me through a hard time.

Ironically, a lot of the time I think I’m doing “too well.” I don’t think people expect me to be hurting, so when I am I feel like I’d need to try extra hard to prove it. That I’d have to expend energy I don’t have in order to explain.

Sometimes I wish my mind would let me die. When I start to think about it, my brain stops me. It comes up with alternatives, makes plans, makes me live. I’m grateful to be alive, but sometimes when I’m at my worst, living is just so exhausting."

Hearts of AM ~ #10