I am depressed.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been depressed, I’ve lived with it since I entered puberty. A time coincidently, that was the end of my parents marriage and the beginning of ten years smoking pot five times a day. I don’t smoke any more, and my parents are still very divorced.
Being depressed for me is like being underwater and having 50 pounds of lead strapped to my back. I can think fine. I am just very tired, and slow to move. I find that I would rather sit alone all day, than interact with anything or anybody.
I release myself momentarily from my previous obligations, as I entered into said obligations in a state very different. I find that fulfilling the obligations of the non-depressed is near impossible for the afflicted.
Dealing with acquaintances is painful, mostly for them. Most people are very uncomfortable with other people being depressed, and without thinking try to help. What they don’t realize is that if the depression is biochemically based, they have about the same amount of probability helping me, as they do talking someone out of cancer. It’s hard to be around people that care about me. I can see them trying hard to ‘do the right thing’. Most of them are very friendly, though some are obviously out of their depth.
The most difficult thing for me is comparing my performance to that of when I am not depressed. It is often easy for me to be acidic in my appraisal of my own shortcomings. I am highly critical, and become humiliated when I pit an observation of myself, in the shackles of this dreary lethargy, against the idea of a man unencumbered.
I am scared. As I drove home last night with my girlfriend, I related to her how I felt. I was quiet for a bit, which is unusual. I watched the split yellow lines scamper past me on the road at night. I told her I didn’t know what to do, with a certain desperation. I think that is what is most disarming, is the feeling of the inability to change one’s own state, true or not. I teared up. She tried to console me, but I wasn’t really upset, just an voicing the thing I was afraid of.
I, as a person, am afraid of losing control. As a young man, it is scary to watch one’s own life fall short. It is hard to let go of how it should be, and make do with the energy one actually possesses.
I am also writing this to alleviate the pressure I feel to write perky posts, feel good posts. I hope they come, but in order to put words up, I’ll have to be real.
