Depression

Depression is a disorder of mood, so mysteriously painful and elusive in the way it becomes known to the self – to the mediating intellect – as to verge close to being beyond description. It thus remains nearly incomprehensible to those who have not experienced it in its extreme modes.
William Styron, Darkness Visible

I start to get the feeling that something is really wrong. Like all the drugs put together...can no longer combat whatever it is that was wrong with me in the first place. I feel like a defective model, like I came off the assembly line flat-out fucked and my parents should have taken me back for repairs before the warranty ran out.

I grab at everything, I end up with nothing, and then I feel bereft. I mourn for the loss of something I never even had. I am a sick, sick girl.

That's the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it's impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key.
Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation


I’m starting to slide into a cycle of depression again. I started taking anti-depressants once more, but I don’t know how much they help, really. I’m getting that pull-the-covers-over-my-head feeling again and I hate that. I hate how it makes me feel. I hate feeling on the verge of tears all the time. I hate feeling like the inside of my head is a boiling cauldron of rage. Feeling like this makes me want to scoop out my brains. When I’m like this, I can totally understand why some people commit suicide.

It's nearly impossible to explain depression to someone who's never experienced it. My husband has very little patience with me when I get like this, which makes me feel even worse. I feel guilty for feeling so sad. I feel guilty for being so angry all the time. I feel guilty because I know, when I'm like this, I'm making him very unhappy. I just wish I could explain it so that he'd understand, but I don't know if that's possible. He's never been depressed a day in his life and he can't understand why I can't just snap out of it. I can't explain that I don't want to feel this way, but I can't help it, I can't control it. He thinks I can, that I'm just being self-indulgent and whiny. It's very frustrating.

I’ve tried counselling, but I don’t have a THING to be depressed about. I don’t have any major issues, I wasn’t abused as a child, I’m not an alcoholic or the child of one, I don’t have any real crises. So why the fuck do I feel this way? Why can’t I feel better? Why do I always feel like I’m on the outside, looking in at all the normal, well-adjusted people? It fucking sucks.

I feel like I’ve spent my life running away from this feeling. I went to college, but dropped out. I moved back home, I moved back to western Massachusetts, I moved back home, I got married to someone I shouldn’t have married, I moved to Georgia, I got divorced, I went to college again, I moved, I changed jobs, moved again, changed jobs again…. It seems like I get into a really bad place where everything is really bleak and then I think, well, if I only did X, things would be better. And they are for a while, because I have something to take my mind off things. But inevitably, it all spirals downward again and I’m left feeling like I do today – like this sadness inside me has a physical weight. I can feel it pressing down on me, wanting to crush me, wanting to take over my brain and my life and I’m this close to letting that happen.