If You Can't Walk, Crawl

I'm having a really rough time tonight.

Depression is a tricky beast. It's easy to believe that you're seeing life for what it really is, that the veil has been lifted and the soft glow of whimsical self-delusion has been ripped away. It makes the condition of depression feel more like a personal belief instead of a disorder, because while you're miserable, some part of you whispers that you're finally seeing life for what it really is.

Depression is a dirty liar.

Tonight I'm feeling desperately unwanted and irreparably broken. I feel unloved and inconvenient, like I ruin everything I touch. I feel like human trash. I feel like I make people uncomfortable. I feel out of sync and out of place, that my words are never right and my actions are always off. It's physically painful and I feel like I will never be able to convince myself to be happy again.

I also know, distantly, that it's the depression talking. It's hard to separate the two on a regular basis -- sometimes I lay paralyzed in bed just wishing I could convince myself that the stories that the depression tells aren't true. I, like a friend I talked with today, get as far as imagining a world where I'm healthy and awesome... and then come crashing back to this world with fresh cargo of guilt and shame at not being what I wish I were.

Sometimes you have to ride it out. I imagine that this is my underworld, that this is the biome in which my shadow self thrives. I imagine her standing tall and solid in a landscape that is crushing me. She lives and breathes this every day. My personal demons are her neighbors and she invites them over for tea. She is not afraid.

She is me. I just have to find her again.