Tired

A symptom of depression is tiredness. I am tired.

I am tired, yes, but not because I am depressed. I am tired of being depressed, of dragging my friends down into my foul moods, my loneliness; I am tired of feeling guilty for wanting to be held, tired of feeling paralysed when all I want is to ask for help. Yes, I am tired, and it never stops. (The years start coming and they don't stop coming.)

I am tired of having tasks on my to-do list for months, simple tasks that would take perhaps two hours to complete. I am tired of how lazy I become when I settle into a new living space. I am tired of the days when I do absolutely nothing except stare at my phone or tablet or computer all day. I am tired of the person I am becoming. I am tired of my company, and this terrifies me. I am losing the progress I made.

Everyone talks about recovery, about healing, about growth. The message that I get is that it's not normal to relapse. Not healthy. Undesirable. And I think about what I want from my life and from my relationships, and I think, who would want to be friends or anything else with me if they had all of these qualities? And is that why I don't have friends?

I don't mean that I don't have friends, more that I don't have anyone who I would trust with the important stuff. The big stuff, yes, but also the little things that I struggle to talk about, the parts of me that I have always hidden since I knew how to hide parts of myself. I regurgitate the bits I've already told people, perhaps with a slightly varied spin or different words. I hide behind my openness, my oversharing. If I'm this open, surely I couldn't be hiding anything.

I am tired of being asked how I'm feeling. It doesn't matter. What matters is that I don't think I will ever be happy for longer than a few minutes at a time. Content, yes, but not happy. And maybe if I can't access positive emotions, I should take antidepressants again and just be numb. Seems irresponsible for my art, but do I owe the world my art when all I get back is capitalism and the overwhelming inability to cheer myself up?

I have no room to host even a small party for my birthday. I don't want to go out. I don't want to spend the day alone, but it's looking as though I'll be doing that. I feel the space around me pressing in on me, telling me I'll be alone forever. I can't even message my sister in the morning and see if she's awake and wants to call, because it's the middle of the night in New York. I have a lump in my throat the size of Texas and I still can't cry.