Depression
Double post. Shorter than usual.
Most years, she sneaks in somewhere in January or February, not really making herself known until March. This year she announced herself with a bang in December.
If such things as regular readers of this blog exist, you will know why this year is difficult for me. Why this December is difficult for me. But it's still incredibly difficult to reconcile that with the inability to lift my body out of my bed. The only reason I haven't cut myself today is because I'm going home in a few days and I don't want to upset my mother.
The depression starts in my core and spreads through my body and into my brain, numbing me. I cry, but there's nothing cathartic in it, no release, no resolution. I think for the 9372nd time that there's something seriously wrong with me, I need help, and I can't lift myself out of bed to go to my computer to research therapists. I would take a bath if my tub were a little longer and a lot less dirty and if I had a plug to put in the drain. I haven't been kind to myself lately. Or maybe I've been too kind. Extremes are often two sides of the same coin.
I texted my mother, "This may be the first year I bring dirty laundry home." I hate myself for this, for being an inconvenience, because it doesn't seem to matter how many times I'm told otherwise: I can't stop thinking that I'm in everyone's way. I constrict myself, make myself smaller, quieter, less, so that people will like me, or at least so they won't hate me. And inevitably I burst free of the bonds I've shoddily constructed for myself, hurting people around me in the process.
September 2015, I danced on a grass lawn in front of the other 60 or so freshmen in my class, and I didn't care what anyone thought. Now I move carefully, because I'm already broken, so my pain is secondary to others'. It still hurts, but unlike a stubbed toe or a tattoo, the pain inside never goes away. It just waxes and wanes, like the fungus in The Grim Grotto, book eleven in A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. The Medusoid Mycelium, I think it was. Medusa could kill with a look; she's my depression.