We Should Not Be Afraid To Embrace Our Happiness

I have been struggling a lot this past year, mostly fighting bureaucracy and red tape.  Unfortunately, the more heavily the battle weighs down on me, the more it bleeds into and invades every aspect of my life, particularly my writing.  The more anxious I feel about the possibility of losing my battle, the more I find myself writing about how harshly anxiety affects my life. The more depressed I feel about the struggles I am having getting my disability case fixed and open, the more I write about the negative impact of depression.  That is because I write what I feel and unfortunately, when someone has struggled with mental illness their entire life as I have, my words often emulate the negativity and hopelessness felt inside.

But please know that DOES NOT mean I never experience any happiness or that I am not allowed to be happy because I have a mental illness.  Having depression doesn’t mean you’re forbidden from ever experiencing happiness.  Finding a reason to smile or to laugh when you can DOES NOT take away or in any way minimize your struggles or your diagnosis.

I honestly don’t know why so many people expect mental illness to be an absolute, all or nothing diagnosis.

Someone can have arthritis so horrible that they often stay home because it hurts too badly to move, yet still have days between flare ups where they might go for a walk around the block in the sunshine or plant a few flowers in their garden.  People applaud them for their strength for being able to still do things that they enjoy.

Someone can be fighting cancer and lie in bed for weeks, too exhausted to do anything in between their chemo treatments.  When they manage to pull themselves up to sit, talk and laugh with a friend while catching up over a cup of coffee, people cheer them on.  People applaud them for being able to set aside their pain and their struggles for even a few moments to enjoy the world again.

For any other visibly debilitating illness or health struggle, people receive overwhelming support and accolades for managing to embrace even a momentary slice of happiness in the midst of their battle.  They’re commended for their great strength just for still being able to smile.

Yet, for anyone struggling with mental illness, anything even remotely resembling even momentary happiness is met with accusations.  If someone smiles, laughs or talks about having a pleasant time or a good day, people swarm in to attack, assuming we must have been exaggerating or outright faking our illness because in that specific moment we “look just fine”.

They post rude comments on pictures we share where we’re smiling that we “don’t look very depressed to them”.  When we talk about enjoying a few hours out with family or friends, they throw out snide remarks about how they thought we “had too much anxiety to do anything” or that our “depression made it too hard to function” yet they saw us out and about, having fun.

Their barrage of comments often makes us feel even more trapped and isolated by our illness.  We are left feeling like we have to hide or make excuses for even momentary happiness, as if it is a forbidden luxury not extended to the mentally ill.  We worry about even having a more functional than normal day, too, because others assume if we can manage something one day, we can do it every day.  We debate with ourselves whether to even mention those sweet few happy moments to family and friends because we want to avoid those “I thought you were past that whole depression thing” conversations that inevitably emerge later on when we mention our illness has flared up again.

We’re supposed to “get help” and “get better”, to “get over everything” and “just be normal again”, but we’re not allowed to experience anything in between that horrible low and that “back to normal” state we’re pushed toward and expected to achieve.  It is even worse if it is a long-term or life-long struggle.  Many of those on the outside looking in can’t understand the ups and downs, highs and lows, the forward progress and backslides we go through, assuming we should be on a straight track from sick back to healthy again.  They claim we seemed “just fine, even smiling” when they bumped into us at the grocery store last month so they figured we were “over that whole depression thing” as if it is some fad we were doing for fun, something they believed we would be over by now.

People can be in physical pain or be struggling with health conditions that make it harder to function and it’s okay.  Even not being able to work is considered acceptable because others can see the pain.  Those momentary bits of happiness are seen as a wonderful treasure for someone who needs and deserves it after the battle they’ve been fighting.

Just because you can’t see my mental illness does not mean I am not struggling with it.  It does not mean that I am not fighting just as hard to function and to be as healthy as possible just like others with illnesses you can see.  And I refuse to relinquish the little pieces of happiness that I experience just because others assume that, in order for my depression to be genuine, I must be miserable and suffering every hour of every day without break or end.

The truth is that, no matter how bad I am struggling on any given day, no matter how hopeless my world feels, I try to seek out at least one reason to smile every day.  I have been told that I am the sweetest, most upbeat depressed person many people have ever met because I fight very hard to be optimistic and not give up hope.  I refuse to drown in my mental illness.  I have waged war on it and every single day I strike, reminding myself that there is still good in the world, beauty all around me, that there are still reasons to wake up in the morning and things to be grateful for in my life.

I strive to create good moments and memories whenever I can, to find reasons smile and laugh.  We have family movie and game nights.  I snuggle up with my partner and  watch movies together or laugh at silly animal videos online.  Though I struggle most days to socialize outside my house because my mental illness causes me to naturally isolate myself, I manage to joke here and there with friends online and share funny stories and memes.  I even occasionally go out, whether to enjoy some time out while the weather is nice or to spend a little time with family and friends.

None of that negates my diagnosis.  None of that minimizes my struggles.

It is no different than what someone with one of hundreds of different visible illness does to try and bring some joy into their lives to distract themselves from the pain.

It does not change the fact that the majority of the time I struggle to even pull myself out of bed or to eat.  It doesn’t change the fact that I spend most of my life struggling to even function, overwhelmed and crying.  It doesn’t change the fact that my illness is still always there, right under the surface, beneath that smile, silently eating away at me, trying to drag me back down.

I won’t apologize for my little bits of happiness and I won’t stop seeking them out.  I need them for morale and for my own self-care and sanity.  I need to seek out happiness in this world wherever I can find it so I have a reason to keep going and not give up even when my mental illness makes the world feels hopeless.

Being able to sometimes smile and laugh or enjoy part of your day when you’re struggling with mental illness shouldn’t be treated as a cardinal sin.  It should be applauded as a sign of strength and self-care.  Having a mental illness should not mean that you are never allowed to be happy again.  It is not an absolute, all or nothing, you either have depression or happiness, choice.

If we manage to find a reason to smile or laugh for even a brief period in our day, please cheer us on for our ability to do so.  Don’t rain on our parade just because you cannot see our pain or understand our illness.  Any smile, any momentary happiness is a victory against an illness that is intent on dragging us downward into misery and despair.  Don’t try to take that victory away from us.

To those who managed to smile or laugh today, good for you!  Keep fighting the good fight and don’t ever let anyone else make you feel like you’ve done anything wrong by being happy because you haven’t.  Embrace your happiness.  Cherish it.  You deserve it!

An Honest Dialogue About the Realities of Mental Illness

I woke up this morning to a message in my inbox on my Twitter author account.  Admittedly, I rarely open up messages on that site these days because the majority of them are either bots or phishing scams.  But, even by the small preview pane, I could see this one was different.  They began by explaining they had been reading through some of my writing.  I immediately opened it up to read through it and respond.

I won’t divulge any of what they wrote about because it is not my place to share their story, but as I read over my responses, I couldn’t help but believe that I needed to share my own words further.  To them, I wrote:

…Good morning. No need to apologize at all. I’ve written so very much that unless you’ve stumbled onto certain pieces, it’s unlikely a specific question would be answered. Honestly, it took me hitting a horrible low before I could find my voice. I had to reach a point where something desperately had to change or I knew I was not going to survive..

…As for overcoming my depression, I honestly don’t think there is such a thing, at least in my case.. It was more a matter of accepting my diagnosis for what it was and recognizing my limitations instead of letting the stigma surrounding mental illness control my perception of myself. I still very much have good days and bad days, but at the same time, I’ve gotten better at identifying when it is my depression versus when it is reality.. I’ve also filled my coping toolbox with so many different things so that I have different tools to help me cope with bouts of depression and anxiety.. I’ve learned to look at my mental illness much like diabetes – it’s an illness that causes one of the organs in my body to not function properly – there is currently no cure and it needs regular monitoring and care – but it is possible to exist and live with mental illness just like it is possible with diabetes.. I find myself still struggling, as well, to find a combination of medication that works right for me but I have sincere high hopes that in the future, when that combination is discovered, things will be much better and it will become easier for me to function..

…I apologize if you were hoping for some sort of secret cure all, or some way to make it go away on it’s own.. I don’t think something like that exists at this point, at least in cases such as mine.. I think, for me, it was a matter of changing how I viewed my illness and changing how I viewed myself.. Accepting that I am not broken or crazy but that I have an illness that affects my brain and that I deserve not only treatment but compassion and understanding, as well. I speak out and write a lot about what it is like living with mental illness because I want others to know, as well, that they’re not alone.. that others are struggling to fight similar battles and that we cannot buy into the stigma surrounding our illness, that we are not to blame for our illness, that our illness does not define us and that there is no shame in being mentally ill.

…I apologize for all the typos.. I was typing in the dark on my laptop.. I wanted to answer your questions right away and found my fingers struggling to keep up with my mind as I threw my answer out there.. I hope some or all of that helped.. I thank you for taking the time to read so much of my story and I sincerely wish you the best.. Please stay strong and don’t lose hope.. A mental illness diagnosis does not define you and it doesn’t have to be the end of anything. I truly love that the mental health community has embraced the semicolon ( ; ) as a symbol because it is used when a sentence could have ended but the author chose, instead to keep going. None of our stories are over either. We just have to keep fighting. If you are able, have a wonderful day. If that isn’t possible, please at least have a day. Keep going, keep powering through. And know that you’re not alone.

…Reading over all of this, part of me honestly feels horrible if anything I had written gave the impression that I had in any way found a path beyond my illness. As you can tell by much of my writing, I still struggle with horrible lows and have days where I consider getting out of bed, eating and doing my dishes as a victory. I’ve learned to differentiate between my illness and reality but that in itself does not change the physical things going on within my mind and body. My mind and body still go haywire regularly – I am working with my doctors to find a way to get them under control much like a diabetic manages their illness with insulin and glucose.. I know talking about looking at my illness differently doesn’t sound like much but it has been a huge stepping stone for me because it has allowed me to stop beating myself up for being ill, to stop hating myself and treating myself as if I am broken or crazy. By recognizing it as an illness and not something messed up inside myself, I was able to take back some control and begin working towards getting my illness under control. Things may be rough right now but this illness can be treated.. It just takes time. I’m not sure there ever will be a point where I’ll be fully functional, but I’d happily settle for being more functional than I currently am.

I honestly felt I needed to put this out there, to make sure everyone reading my writing understood that I am in no way touting any magical cure all for mental illness, nor am I implying in any way that mental illness is anything that a person can overcome by sheer willpower alone.  Mental illness is just that – an illness – and it needs treatment.  It won’t go away on its own.

I do believe, however, that we can destigmatize our illness and take back control over our lives.  We cannot will away how our symptoms present themselves but we can change how we view them and how we treat ourselves.

Please know that I’m a realist.  I’m not going to throw out those tired cliches about trying harder to be happy or how life will somehow magically be better if you let go of your past because I’ve been there myself and I know how infuriatingly useless they are.  I’ve worked through issues from my past and my mental illness still remained – because it is an illness that needs treatment.  I know firsthand how rough this illness can be and I won’t sugarcoat it because it does none of us any good to minimize our symptoms for the comfort of others.  I speak openly and honestly about what it is like to live with mental illness because I know holding it in and pretending things are okay doesn’t work.  Those of us suffering can barely wrap our own heads around our illness – how can we expect those who have never experienced it themselves to understand unless we throw it all out there and tell them?

I apologize if anyone who has been following my journey feels misled, hoping for some panacea, some advice or trick that will help their mental illness magically go away.  As far as I know, no such thing exists.

I may be a realist, but I’m also an optimist.  Since I have changed how I view my own illness, I have newfound hope for the future.  I have seen marked changes and improvements in the last couple years alone.  Though my fight is far from over, I truly believe that further advancements are possible and that things can and will continue to improve over time with continued treatment.

I write about mental illness not because I have all the answers but because I know it is a problem we cannot solve by pretending it isn’t there.  We need to talk about mental illness.  We need to fight the stigma.  We need to share our journey with others who are struggling so that they know they are not alone.  We need to stop blaming ourselves, stop hating ourselves, and accept our condition for what it is – an illness that needs medical treatment.

For everyone else out there fighting their own battles with mental illness, please stay strong, keep fighting, don’t give up hope.  See a doctor.  Talk about everything you’re going through without minimizing or sugar coating it.  Stop blaming yourself and hating yourself for your condition.  Please know that you’re not alone.  And most importantly, even if you cannot have a good day, at least still have a day.  None of our stories are over and we can get through this together.

What it is Like When PTSD Gives You Flashbacks of Abuse

I had a flashback today.  They don’t happen very often, but when they do, they shake me to the core.

It started with an argument at home.  In a moment of anger and frustration as he stormed out of the room, he shoved a floor fan on the other side of the bed, knocking it over.  He hadn’t meant to scare or startle me.  In that brief moment of frustration, he had lashed out without thinking, not even realizing the effect it might have on me.

It was an instant trigger for me.

I know he has never hit me or laid his hands on me in any way and that he would never do such a thing.  I know he isn’t even normally explosive like that.  I know he’d never hurt me nor would he ever intentionally do anything to scare or trigger me. Yet, in that moment, everything I knew flew right out the window.

I was suddenly that 8 year old girl again, that girl that knew when things went flying it was only a matter of moments until the pain began.  I was that little girl again, scrambling off the bed and cowering in the corner of the room in a tight ball, wishing I could shrink down to nothing and fade away.  I was that girl again, panicked because my arms were too tiny to shield myself, that I didn’t have enough arms to block the whirlwind of hits and kicks I knew was inevitably coming.

I don’t know if my flashbacks are the same as other people’s because I wouldn’t dream to even ask anyone else with PTSD how their attacks play out.  I do know, though, that my mind works differently than many people’s.  You see, among other issues, I have a condition called aphantasia.  In simplest terms, I cannot visualize.  When most people are told to imagine an apple, they can create an image of an apple in their mind.  Though I know what an apple is and can list all types of factual things about an apple, I cannot form an image of one in my mind.  The same goes with memories.  I can list all types of facts about an occasion but I cannot create an image of it from memory.

Because of that fact, my flashbacks do not have images from my past.  My body, however, remembers other things.  I’ve always considered it a type of muscle memory of sorts, triggered by my PTSD.  My mind has retained how those blows felt raining down again and again so when I am pulled back into my past for a flashback, it is those sensations and memories and not visualizations that I experience again.

As I lay curled up in a ball in the corner, I swear I could feel that barrage of swings and kicks as if they were happening right that moment.  My ribs ached from blows delivered back when I was a child.  I struggled to catch my breath as the wind I breathed decades ago felt knocked out of me again.  I felt I needed to protect myself, shield my head and my body, bracing myself for damage long healed.  I could feel bruises blossoming on my skin as a far off voice that felt disconnected and not my own pleaded to not be hurt, cried for it to stop, begged to be left alone. I was trapped in that moment, reliving the abuse of my childhood.

I was vaguely aware of his presence and of disjointed words being said that seemed to disperse before they ever reached my ears.  Though some small part of me recognized his presence, he felt no more real at that moment than I did.  The only thing that felt real was that scared little child who desperately wanted to protect herself from any more hurt.

It felt very akin in a way to the sunken place described in that movie Get Out, where a part of myself was watching and witnessing from afar, though disconnected and unable to do a thing.  I felt trapped in the past, cemented into a nightmare from my childhood, lost within my own head.

A small fragment of my consciousness wanted to scream that this isn’t real, to force myself awake and claw my way back to reality.  But it felt so real.  It was like I was trapped drowning in a memory, unable to catch my own breath.

After what felt like an eternity, I was slowly able to wrestle my way back to myself.  I sat there in the corner, shaking and sobbing, rubbing and squeezing my arms and legs, trying to convince myself that I was myself again, back in the present.  I kept reminding myself it was over, I was safe, that none of that had really just happened.  But it felt so real.  My ribs still ached as if blows had recently landed and my limbs all still stung as if they were bruised.

I sat on the floor, shaking and crying for almost an hour, searching deep within for the strength to even pull myself up off the floor and onto the bed.  I was mentally, emotionally and physically exhausted from my journey back in time.  I felt like I was freezing.  My teeth chattered whenever I tried to close my mouth, though it was not from the cold.  I was shaken to the core by the whole experience.

I eventually eased myself back up onto the bed and pulled the covers protectively around myself though they did nothing to stop the chill that went down to my bones or to quiet the sobs that still wracked my body.  He held me, doing his best to comfort and soothe me, apologizing again and again for ever even getting upset, pleading for me to talk to him, to let him know I was okay.  It was the first flashback episode of mine that he had witnessed and it scared and shook him to the core as much as it had me.

I laid here in bed, thinking about how badly I needed to share this experience, to try and explain what it was like while it was still fresh in my mind.  I wanted to explain the fear and the terror before the inevitable numbness set in and I shut down in order to recover and recuperate.  I know I didn’t truly go back in time, but I felt just like that little girl again, experiencing one of the many beatings I had endured all over again as if it was happening right in that moment.

I had a PTSD flashback today.

It may have been all in my mind, but it felt devastatingly real to me.

Republished on MamaMia on 4/14/18.

Republished on The Mighty on 4/18/18.

Resolving Trauma Doesn’t Cure Mental Illness

When I explain that I am struggling with mental illness, I am often faced with people questioning why.  I usually start off with a fairly terse and technical response about it being a combination of genetics and life experiences but that answer rarely seems to appease anyone.  Though I am not quite sure why so many people feel I owe them an explanation about my medical condition, more often than not, people continue probing, wanting to know what could have possibly happened in my life that could cause a lifelong mental illness.

It is at this point that I usually explain that I grew up in a dysfunctional, often abusive, household.  I have endured physical, mental, emotional and sexual abuse multiple times each over the years.  I have been knocked down, stepped on, crushed to the core and had my very soul completely obliterated so many times I have lost count.

In response, I usually get the inevitable lecture about not holding onto the past, learning how to forgive, let go and move on.  Sometimes, they even throw in an additional reminder that I shouldn’t allow myself to be a victim for the rest of my life.

What I cannot seem to get through to anyone, though, is that my life experiences are only one small part of a bigger picture.  The traumas in my life did not cause my mental illness but rather they exacerbated it.  They also contributed unhealthy and dysfunctional behaviors and thought patterns.  Though they made a very difficult  situation much worse, resolving the traumas I have endured would not magically make my mental illness disappear.

The truth is that I have come a very long way to resolving and coming to terms with many of the traumas of my past.  I have gone through a lot of therapy over the years and have come to terms with many hard truths.  For instance, I have accepted that my mother shooting my father was in great part due to her often untreated, always undertreated mental illness.  I have accepted that one of the main reasons I had tolerated  repeated infidelity from my romantic partners in the past was due to the fact that I never was able to hold my own father accountable for his transgressions against my mother.  I have accepted that everything in life is not clear cut black or white, good or bad, and have done my best to put myself in the shoes of others and accept the past as something that cannot be changed, letting go of the torment within myself and even forgiving in some instances.

I have even taken things a step further, systematically pulling apart many of my thought processes trying to rout out any dysfunctional or unhealthy behaviors and patterns.  I have put myself under the self-awareness microscope again and again, examining why I react like I do and making a conscious effort to change anything that I believed to be self-destructive or unhealthy.

Most importantly, I have learned to forgive myself and to accept myself for who I am.  I have accepted that I had done nothing wrong to deserve any of the abuse that I was subjected to over the years.  I have even learned to like myself as a person and to identify different traits I possess as being assets.

I don’t consider myself a victim.  I consider myself a survivor.  Though the traumas I have been through have greatly contributed to the person I am and they deserve acknowledgement for that fact, I refuse to let them control my life or dictate the person I am going to be.  I am not looking for pity.  I just want acceptance and understanding.

Though I have fought extremely hard to work through many of the traumas I have endured in my life and consider myself very self-aware, I still struggle with mental illness every single day.  Why?  Because it is a medical condition.  Much like a person’s diabetes may be made worse by a large intake of sugary foods, removing those foods will not magically make their diabetes disappear any more than working through my traumas will make my mental illness disappear.

Part of my diagnosis is a genetic mutation.  This mutation greatly hinders my body’s ability to make a substance my brain needs to moderate my moods.  In essence, my brain has been starving for what it needs my entire life, getting at best 20% of a specific chemical it needs.  Though the traumas I have experienced contributed greatly to the severity of my condition and have negatively impacted my life, my mental illness would have existed even if none of them ever occurred.

Another portion of my mental illness is genetic in general.  Both my parents struggled with various mental illnesses over the years.  My mother suffered from bipolar disorder and my father struggled with depression throughout his life.  Though a parent having a mental illness does not guarantee the diagnosis in their children, studies have shown that the five major mental illnesses can be traced the the same inherited genetic variations.  So much like parents can pass along their eye or hair color, they can also pass along the predisposition for mental illness.

I struggle every single day with my mental illness.  Regardless of whether the rational part of my brain tells me that today should be a good day, another large part of my brain is constantly sending out negative emotions and responses, which in turn sometimes presents itself in physical ways.  I am in a constant battle with my own brain and body.  Though difficult times might contribute to the severity of my downward spiral on a given day, the absence of bad days does not negate my mental illness.  It is always there.

Yet that technical explanation is rarely enough to placate anyone looking for answers.  Many people seem to believe that mental illnesses like depression occur when something bad happens and can be just as easily solved by resolving the underlying issue.  They look for key life events to target, assuming the person struggling will magically be cured if they can just get past that traumatic event.

I can tell you that it rarely is that easy.  Yes, there are some cases of mental illness that are predominately situation-based where the person’s mental health greatly improves when the trauma is resolved, like increased depression caused by bullying, for example.  Likewise, there are milder cases of diabetes where the person’s sugar levels can be moderated predominately by life changes such as diet and exercise alone.  But that does not make that person any less of a diabetic.  For the majority of diabetics, though, addressing their lifestyle is not enough.  They need ongoing treatment and monitoring in order to stay healthy because their illness causes one of the organs in their body to not work properly.  The same can be said for mental illness.  The only difference is that it is our brain that is malfunctioning.

Providing a detailed list of our traumas does not give a run down of how to magically cure our mental illnesses.  Time and again, we throw out our trauma lists out of frustration because some people cannot seem to wrap their head around the fact that we have a medical condition that affects the way our brains work.  It is approached as “mind over matter”, that if we just try hard enough to work through things and learn to let go, we’ll be happy again.  Unfortunately, it does not work that way.

There is no shame in having a mental illness.  It is a medical condition that statistics show now affects one in five people in the world to varying degrees.  We need to stop the stigma surrounding mental illness and stop judging everyone who is struggling to live with one.  Nobody would ask a diabetic why they had their condition because it is accepted that sometimes bodies don’t work as they should and people have to seek medical treatment in order to live a healthier life.  People accept that giving up candy bars or soda won’t magically cure a diabetic.  Likewise, working through the traumas in my past will not magically make my mental illness disappear.  No one should have to justify why they have a mental illness nor should they be met with accusations that they are just not trying hard enough to get past their medical condition.  We don’t owe anyone an explanation nor do we deserve being blamed for our illness.

Republished on The Mighty on 5/3/18.

Republished on Yahoo Lifestyle on 5/3/18.

Republished on Yahoo News – India on 5/3/18.

Republished on Yahoo News – Singapore on 5/3/18.

A Day in the Life with Depression

It is 10am. I woke up an hour ago. An ache in my bladder woke me up yet I lay here immobile.

It is 11:30am.  I am still in bed.  My stomach has begun to growl and grumble yet I’m honestly not feeling hungry.  The cramps have increased as my stomach and bladder vie for attention.  Yet I am still laying in bed.

I know that I have to get up, that I should give up, but there’s a booming voice in my head asking “Why bother?”, reminding me nothing is going to get better, there’s nothing I can do to change anything, that I might as well just stay in bed.  I cannot disagree.  I’m too mentally, emotionally and physically exhausted to argue.  So I just lay here.

It is 1pm.  I have been laying in bed for 4 hours now, tormenting myself over my inaction.  I have drifted back to sleep here and there for a few minutes but it was a fitful, restless sleep.  I cannot remember the last time I slept well.  If I stay awake long enough, I might pass out from exhaustion for a few hours but otherwise my sleep come in random spurts.  My mind never stops racing, never stops running, reminding me of all I should be doing, all I haven’t done, the person I believe I should be and the reality of how broken I feel.

I manage to pull myself out of bed to pee.  My stomach is still growling and grumbling.  I know I have to eat but I have no desire.  Nothing sounds good.  I curl up on the couch with my legs tucked beneath me, wrapped in a blanket.  At least I’m out of bed.

I mindlessly snack on some stale chips or cookies left out nearby or I pop open a can of soup.  I don’t bother heating it up or even putting it in a bowl because I don’t honestly want it anyway.  I rationalize that I’m dirtying less dishes this way and figure at least I’m eating something.  It’s about all I can do for self-care today.

I hate my life.  I hate myself.  I hate that I cannot function.

I feel like I’ve let everyone in my life down, that I’ve let myself down.  I don’t understand what is wrong with me.  I pull my blanket more tightly around myself and just cry.

I wish I knew what to do.  I wish I knew how to fix things.  I wish I could stop feeling like this.  I wish I could just be happy.  I wish a thousand things that I know will never come to pass because this is just what my life is.

As hard as I try to cling to something positive, any glimmer of hope, my world feels hopeless.  I desperately want to be happy.  I just want to be okay.  I just don’t know how.

It’s 5pm.  I’m still sitting on the couch in the same pajamas I have been wearing for three days now.  I know I should shower but I haven’t really done anything to get myself dirty so I figure it can be put off another day.   At least I got out of bed today and I ate something.

I’ve wasted the last few hours halfheartedly browsing the web, looking at reminders of all my friends and family happily going on with their lives without me.  I’d reach out and touch base but why bring them down?  I wish I could have things together, too, something, anything.  I wish I wasn’t such a mess.  I miss them but at the same time I can’t help but believe they’re better off when I keep my distance.  Nobody needs my mess in their life.  Maybe I’ll reach out next week or next month or whenever I finally find a way to pull myself together.  But not today.

It’s 9pm.  I’ve spent the last few hours attempting to watch something on television or Netflix or to read a book.  I can’t really tell you what any of it was about, though, because I kept zoning out.  I must have watched the same scenes or read the same pages three or four times before giving up.  I tell myself that it doesn’t really matter anyway.  I was just trying to pass the time.

I wander into the bathroom to pee, hoping to empty my bladder so it doesn’t wake me up tomorrow.  My stomach has started growling again but I don’t feel like eating so I make excuses about it being too late anyway and that I don’t want to add any more dishes to those I should have washed yesterday.  I figure I’ll just eat when I wake up tomorrow.

I crawl back in bed.  I know that it’ll be hours before I fall asleep but it really doesn’t matter.  I just want to lay down.  Even though I haven’t done anything today, I feel mentally and emotionally exhausted.

I’m not being lazy.

I’m not having a pity party.

I am suffering from depression.

This has been me on so many days.  These days are so alike they’re interchangeable and bleed together into one another.  It is just a small glimpse of what one random day with depression looks like behind closed doors.