Sometimes, on days like today, the world passes by outside my window and I barely notice it. I find myself locked, deep in thought, a Chinese finger trap for the self, whilst images of supposed failures replay themselves over and over in my mind.
This is just one part of suffering from depression, or at least it is just one part of my experience of it. Of course, there is no intention on my part for things to proceed thus, it just sort of happens. The most innocent of thoughts can set the thing in motion. I might wonder why I had not watered the plants, or posted that package I meant to, but at the moment of thinking it, I can almost feel myself slap on the brakes, cast out the anchor and everything around me ceases to have much significance.
I have cranked the starting handle on another day of disappointment in myself. All those things I wish I had done, or promised to have done, or intended to do. All the dreams unfulfilled, all the difficult choices avoided come flooding out in a torrent. I become transfixed on all the things I haven't done, and wracked with grief and shame that I have let people down. It is the cruelest of illnesses that eats away at your self-confidence like this, but it is what I find myself fighting, week after week, month after month.
Nothing I tell myself can shift the guilt pangs and borderline self-loathing that accompany this part of depression. Worse than that, I am hopeless at sharing this (outside the safety zone of my blog) - I don't feel my issues are worth airing, or I don't want anyone to worry about me, about what I am thinking, feeling or suffering. Internalisation sets in, and is just as rotten and ruinous as the doubt and the guilt. Everything is crammed down, held in the very pit of my stomach. No-one need know I am unhappy, no-one need see or share in it. As hopeless as I am at dealing with the thought cycles, I am determined they shall not bring a moment of darkness to anyone's day.
Sitting here now and typing this, it all seems so easy - just let your loved ones in, just talk, just accept the innocence of forgetting to post a package. If only depression were not so cruel, did not take away from me moments of sharing and compassion I constantly deny myself. If only I could let myself collapse in someone's company and let them put me back together again. If only.... if only depression were not such a cruel master or I such a compromised servant. And yet it is, and so here I sit on another silent evening, a single fat tear running down my cheek as the only testament to the torture within.
