(This was originally going to be a poem. But  FUCK poetry. I have way too much to say for that shit .)

Sometimes, my depression is like….an invisible straightjacket that restricts what I do in a way that makes no sense to those who cannot see it. I don’t believe I can escape it, so to save at least some of my sanity, I’ve  learned to ignore it too.

In fact, when I am performing socially, I can fool myself into forgetting that I am sick and believing that there is nothing really wrong with me, I have just been in a bad mood.

For my entire adult life.

And I am 44

It’s a nice place to visit, but I can’t exactly live there.  I wish I could become the person I pretend to be, and I am working on that.

But it will take a long time. I just have to remind myself that the person I pretend to be is me as well.

Sometimes, my depression is like…. a twisting, crushing, spaghetti-fying black hole at the center of my soul. A brutal inward tide that draws everything into its maw of annihilation and despair. It devours all, leaving me hollow and empty and sad. Attemptds to satisfy it work for a while. But the void in my soul is patient. It knows it will win in the end.

Sometimes, my depression is like….a terrified beast hunted by long, dark demons and driven into a state not unlike insanity where it wants to get away,  get away, get away before the bad thing happens!

This animal knows, in its heart, that it is going to die, because it’s only one little animals versus a galaxy of monster that all want to eat him, crunch crunch GOODBYE.

He also knows that before he dies, when he knows there is no way out, he is going to snap like a dry twig and murder every single fucking one of them he can before they eventually put him down.

He doesn’t want this to happen.

But the thought makes me feel a little better.

Sometimes, my depression is like….an endless dirfting through dimly lit subterranean canalls, where the only sound is the lapping of the waves against the hull of my gondola and the tiny bumping sounds from the gondola’s smooth passage through a canal barely wider than it is.

And behind it all is a slow, even, strong, masterful rowing.

And the real mystery is not why I am in this canal…

But why I like it so much.

Sometimes, my depression is like….being the outermost planet in a vast solar sytem, pathetically dependent on the tiny amount of energy it gets from that hot and wonderful star at the center of it all, and worried that nobody even notices or cares about it because it’s so far out.

And on that planet is a robot. And that robot’s job is to monitor signals from the inner planets, and report what it finds.

And it spends every day monitoring as hard as it can. It has to try so hard because it is barely picking up anything. And the signal he picks up are so faint that they barely make any sense and seem random and thoughtless to the robot.

So the robot has concluded that nobody is transmitting, that the signals he picks up are all in his mind, and that he would be better off shutting down and going offline.

But what this robot does not know is that it has a broken antenna. That therfe are, in fact, many stations broadcasting to it on every channel and at full power, and that are desperate to make some kind of contact with him.

It thinks that nobody cares.

But it’s just a broken antenna.

Sometimes, my depression is like….a chill fog that fills my mind and makes it so hard to think and plan and do complex things. An artificial lobotomization that renders a n otherwise highly intelligent person from being able to cope with even the most basic levels of life. The things healthy people don’t even think of as tasks, let alone understand wbhy someone would find it hard to do them.

So it leaves me drowning in plain view of everyone but nobody can throw me a line because they don’t even see what is killing me.

Sometimes, my depression is like….a deep rage that burn all it touches and most of what it touches is me. An impotent rage that takes out its frustrations on the one available target : ,me.

It’s a ravenous monster, and I have locked myself in with it in order to make absolutely sure that it doesn’t hurt anyone else.

So it eats me instead. And that only leads to more rage. So it’s like I am constantly punishing myself for the crimes I have committed against myself when punishing myself for the crimes…. and so forth and so on.

And the great thing about this self-torture is that it’s conflict free. You don’t have to challenge anyone to a fight over it. You can do it whenever you like, because your victim is always right at hand. And you know he deserves it too for being such a pathetic loser and sucking so bad at everything and basically being horrible….BECAUSE of the self-loathing and self-torture.

The punishments is part of the problem.

And sometimes, my depression is like….being a kid who is all alone in front of the school because everybody forgot to pick him up and now the shadows are getting longer and the people who live across the street from the school are starting to wonder what is going on and the people driving by wonder too, but not for very long, because they have to get on with their lives.

He doesn’t notice any of this, though, because as the minutes tick past he gets sadder and sadder till ihe feels like he will crumple in on himself at any moment, because that screaming void inside him just keeps getting bigger and bigger because it’s clear that he doesn’t matter and doesn’t count and nobody cares about him enough to do one single thing to help him.

And he deserves it all, because he’s terrible.

His harried aunt arrives just in time to see he has attempted suicide… again.

She rolls her eyes. Nobody nobody likes the kid. He’s such a drama queen.,

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.