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abyss, ashamed, battle, bottom, burden, caged, chained, colors, compassion, consumes, courage, crumbles, demon, depression, desert, diving, downward, dreams, drowning, emotions, energy, enjoy, episode, escape, exhausted, Fall, family, fate, fault, Fear, feed, Fighting, flesh, food, forsaken, friends, glass, grip, grow, happiness, helpless, hollow, human, husk, identity, Illusion, interest, joy, lie, life, loosing, Lost, mercy, mind, mistakes, Monster, noose, onster, overcome, Pain, Past, peace, perspective, pit, precious, prison, punishment, Reality, rest, sacrifice, Salvation, sanity, sap, Scream, shattered, shell, Sin, Skin, sleep, slow, smile, spiral, Struggle, Suffering, taste, teeth, thoughts, torment, War, water, weakness, willpower, wishes, yourself
Depression is a monster, that likes to play with its food. Sinking its teeth ever so slowly deeper into your flesh, till that moment, where it consumes you whole. It is a slow process, not like hitting a wall. Something feels off at first. You can’t tell what it is, but you are feeling more and more exhausted from your daily life. Things you enjoyed bring you less and less joy, your food looses its taste, your sleep becomes exhausting. You spend hours to fall asleep, while the thoughts in your mind are dancing wildly, only to wake up in the middle of the night, hours before your alarm goes off, still at the mercy of your own thoughts. A slow downwards spiral. Your exhausted, so you spend less time with your friends, family and the things you like and love, you spend more time trying to regain some energy. A illusion because your thoughts sap you of even more energy than the time spend with your loved ones. You are fighting a loosing battle, all by yourself. Slowly and slowly you need more of your diminishing energy to keep your thoughts and sanity in check, you loose interest into everything else. “Just let me lie here and rest for a little bit, it will all get better soon.” But it won’t. This is just a lie, a monster is whispering in your ear, a lie you want to desperately believe.
While everyone around you seems to walk just fine, you are struggling. Depression is this feeling, of loosing your grip on yourself and your life. It consumes the happiness in your life, feeds on your emotions, wishes and dreams, sucks you dry till only a hollow husk remains, that is barely recognizable as a human. Your eyes start to loose there spark, they become dim and without reflection, lifeless and hopeless. Reality crumbles around you, while you desperately try to hold on to something. The ground around you vanishes and you start to fall. But your hands just grasp into nothingness as the cold water encases you. Depression feels like drowning, while your fully awake and aware of it. You are drowning while everyone else seems to be able to swim just fine. And no one seems to notice, that you are not diving, on the contrary something is pulling you down, something that sunk its teeth deep into your own flesh and mind. You want to scream, but the water muffles your noises. You feel helpless and forsaken, you resigned to your fate. It feels like there is nothing you can do. You are ashamed of yourself, of your own weakness. “If you just had been stronger, this would never have happened.” Another lie whispered into your ear. Another lie you want to believe.
You are exhausted and broken, there is no more escape, the bottom of the abyss comes closer and closer. It draws you in, like a moth to the flame. Comforting the last pieces of your identity. Who are you? What do you like? What do you enjoy and love? What do you dream of? What do you wish for? Who are your friends? Who might help you now? The answers of those question are of no interest to you any more. You don’t care any more or you have forgotten. What is left of you? This is the only important question, the question that is nagging on your mind. What is left of you and is that what is left even worth saving and fighting for?
The vast emptiness of the bottom of the abyss. A desert of broken dreams and glass, where the wind is as sharp as razor blades, cutting deeper into your own flesh. Something you don’t feel any more. You are just a hollow shell, your feeling like a creature, that is wearing human skin to hide among the masses. Who are you? You don’t know any more. You only know one thing, you want to escape this torment, this prison, this monster, that consumed your flesh and even worse your whole being and identity, your compassion and dreams.
At the bottom of the pit, forsaken in the pitch black of the abyss, there is only one last thing to do, one last wish to fulfill. You just want to escape this torment, you just want to rest, you just want peace from the never ending war, that is raging in your mind. To achieve this last wish, to achieve salvation, you will sacrifice the last thing you can and have, your own life. And in doing so you lost your chance to find happiness, to overcome this monster and this pain. But if you lost everything piece by piece, your life seems like a small price to pay. What would you do in the end? Put a noose around your neck or open your veins? “Die and be free of pain or live to fight your sorrow?” It is your choice to make. Nothing else matters except this choice. Your whole live brought you to this point. What would you choose?
This is how it goes, if you don’t seek some help or start to talk about your own situation. Because you are ashamed and full of fear, this is the hardest part of it all. And even if you overcome this struggle, this episode, depression will always come back in a moment, when you are struggling with yourself. It is a lifelong struggle. You have to overcome your past, because if you don’t, it will always keep you chained and caged. No matter where you are, there is no escape from the demons of your own mind. The world around you keeps changing, but not your own perspective. You are trapped here, inside your own mind, till you learn how to change the perspective and in doing so, you can arrange yourself with your own past. Piece by piece, slowly the demon will loose more of its teeth and the next episode will be less painful.
It takes courage to stand back up. It takes a immense amount of willpower to decide to fight on. Even if you don’t know who you are any more, you can still find yourself again, collect the shattered pieces of your mind. It takes time, a lot of time. It took 10 years for me to piece the pieces back together. Always remember, that you are precious, that you didn’t choose this fate, it was chosen for you. I know that it feels unfair, suffering for something that is not your fault. But you can overcome this fate and grow as a person. You are not punished for your own sins, this is no punishment at all, even if it feels like this. It is a burden, you have to carry because of the mistakes of others. Take good care of yourself and smile. You are still here and so am I. My past taught me, that even the worst fate, still has good sides to it. The world is not black and white, it is full of colors and emotions, colors and emotions I wanna carry into the world.