I am struggling. I am fighting a heaviness I have not met before. Friends, I didn't know how to tell you, and so I just kept quiet. But now it is time to speak, now is the time to rally my strength and fight off whatever the hell this is brewing inside me. It is dark and scary and deep. To be honest, it is also really boring. Depression sounds so tragically beautiful sometimes– movies and dramas have made it seem like a heart-wrenching, but awfully romantic place to be. But it's not. I sit in my bedroom (that isn't truly mine) and lie on a bed (also not my very own) and I cry. Sometimes I sob uncontrollably and choke myself. Sometimes it's only tears and silence and my throat aches. Sometimes, when my body is tired of crying, I put it to sleep, hoping that while I am unaware, the hours will pass by and I will wake up new, fresh, feeling alive. But I never do. I wake up feeling pressed upon, feeling heavy, and feeling guilty for feeling all of these things while carrying this precious life around inside me. Sometimes I take half-hour scalding showers, pretending all I need is a good rinse, a good scrub, as if this despair can be washed away with a little soap and massaged out with a bit of lotion. But breathing feels the same afterwards. Lifting my limbs feels the same. I search inside for something warm, something related to hope, but I find a cold hard place right in my center.
The hardest part of all is the feeling that this depression, this constant undercurrent of immobility and inability, it has no legitimate source. I cannot point to things and appoint blame. Others must look at my life and wonder where all this sadness is coming from. Yesterday was a rough day. Kenny took me to coffee and said, "What is it, Danielle? Just tell me." And I had no answer. I have no clue what it is. If I knew, I would tell him and we would fix it. But it's not a thing I can define. It's the cousin of despair, the bastard child of sadness and hopelessness. And it is unwelcome here.
The hardest part of all is the feeling that this depression, this constant undercurrent of immobility and inability, it has no legitimate source. I cannot point to things and appoint blame. Others must look at my life and wonder where all this sadness is coming from. Yesterday was a rough day. Kenny took me to coffee and said, "What is it, Danielle? Just tell me." And I had no answer. I have no clue what it is. If I knew, I would tell him and we would fix it. But it's not a thing I can define. It's the cousin of despair, the bastard child of sadness and hopelessness. And it is unwelcome here.
