There’s a pile of clothes by the wardrobe.
They’ve been there for a few days now. I believe it is, in fact, made up of several piles that have come into my possession. The only things I have put away are my work clothes, and that’s because I actually have to be presentable in them.
The clothes on the floor are only part of it. I’m showering less, a textbook sign of the sad. I’ve been tidying only when there’s people coming round. I’m forgetting to clean my teeth as often. My skin is a mess of scars and scabs from where I’ve been picking at it. I’ve got letters on the table I haven’t sent, phone calls I haven’t returned, commitments I’ve neglected. It’s ironic that one of the things I haven’t done is get the doctor’s note for my leave of absence from uni: the piece of paper that will prove I have depression bad enough that I can’t function unaccounted for after three months because I can’t function enough to get up in the morning and book an appointment. I’m sleeping for ten hours a night or more and even then I need to nap in the afternoon. I miss experiencing mornings every day. I’m working two days in a row over the weekend and I’m scared because normally I can only work one and then need a day or two to recover. I hate myself for a laziness I’m not sure I actually possess.
My mind slides far to often into its own kind of white noise. Television makes me cry because I can’t bear all of the emotions, good or bad. I’m not as funny any more, nor is my sense of humour as acute. Sometimes I can tell when someone is joking, but sometimes I take even the most obvious gag seriously and personally.
Migraines send it all into overdrive because I lose any control I have over it all. The little film of sanity I manage to erect is punctured by pain and all the silliness rushes out of the tiny gap like air from a balloon. I weep and weep and want to run away and feel dangerous in a way I can’t describe. I’m scared I’ll hurt someone. I’m scared I want to hurt someone. I see myself doing horrible things because it’s what I’m scared of doing and then I can’t stop seeing them: me smashing bones, tearing flesh, beating life away, things I never want to do and can’t contemplate myself doing but I can see myself doing anyway and it terrifies me. I’m scared that I think I want to die but am too scared to do anything about it. Maybe just knocking myself out for a while would be enough but then I’d only have to wake up again. My face hurts from all the crying.
I wonder whether I’m just doing it all for attention. Maybe I’m histrionic and dependent and I’m manipulating everyone by making it seem so real, even to myself. Maybe I’m even deceiving myself in some kind of weird and awful way. Perhaps they should lock me away because if I’m even thinking it surely that means it’s a possibility I’m doing it and shouldn’t someone doing something that horrible just be kept from harming and manipulating anyone else? Maybe even by writing this blog post I’m inciting sympathy – what if I’m just looking for the outpouring of love that something this self-serving and full of “truth-bombs” can prompt? And what does that say about me? I genuinely don’t know, and I’m scared that all I am is a very good conman, to the point that I’ve even conned myself.
I wonder what I did to deserve all the people I have. The people who look after me and don’t worry about promises being broken, communication left unanswered and my frequently nasty and unforgivable behaviour. I am grateful to them, for not leaving.
The saddest bit of all this is that this is so far from the worst it can get. For me or for other people. And I feel guilty that I can’t just do what my mum so often tells me to do and “Get Up and Get on With It”, even when I know that this isn’t nearly as bad as it has been before or may be again. And when I know with all certainty that this will fade away. I know full well that one day I’ll wake up and the colour saturation will have been turned up on the world again, that I’ll marvel at the bluety of the sky and the rainbowness of the flowers and even how the rainclouds really are a lovely shade of grey when you look at them. I’ll hear what people are saying to me the first time around and I’ll have a jokey reply. Emotions won’t look as dramatic but they’ll feel like they’re actually reaching my soul again. And I’ll be able to feel every ounce of love I know I have silently screaming in my caged heart at the present time. But with the knowledge of better things comes the fear of the cycle. Depression will go away, but it’ll be back again. And what if it doesn’t go away. What if I’ve experienced feeling real emotion for the last time and now I’m stuck with this pseudo-heart that pumps out tears with nothing behind them? The pills keep me in check, stop this from happening too often but what happens when they stop working? Will the depression take over, like a house hidden in ivy when all the occupiers had tried to do was grow a decorative vine of roses? And then the ivy can’t be taken away without the house falling down. Will depression cease to be an illness and start being a part of me?
There’s a reason that when I’m depressed I turn almost instantly to the Harry Potter audiobooks. Not only is the message of hope from a writer who has experienced depression something comforting to hear, but it being read by another who has had all the pain of a mental illness adds to the experience of the books and their message exponentially. It takes away some of the guilt and replaces it with something better, at least for a time.
I think I am writing this, disjointed and ridiculous as it is, because… well, partly because it’s a convenient way of telling anyone who was wondering why I’ve not been around or been a bit of an arseO recently all in one go without explaining the whole horrible detail of it individually…. partly also because I think there probably need to be more descriptions of individuals’ depression out there, oversaturated as the internet may seem with such things. (I’m sorry mine isn’t particularly funny or in the form of a whimsical cartoon. Maybe one day I’ll publicly tell the story of the time I packed all my knickers in a full on moment of literal madness AND do it as a cartoon just to make up for this bunch of shite.) But also I think it’s to say – in a very very weird and longwinded way – that I’m going to be fine. The clothes will get picked up, the letters will be sent (eventually) and I’ll be back to something resembling normal again. I just don’t know when, and I need to learn some patience.
Expecto Patronum, bitches.
Somewhat Ridiculous 