Feeling pretty bad right now.
I feel cold and isolated. Like I’m a million light years away from the Sun or any other star. I feel numb but it’s the painful kind of numb that feels like some icy beast is biting into your flesh with teeth made of ice, and slowly gnawing on you.
For my West Coast friends, that’s what frostbite feels like when it’s happening.
And of course, along with the cold comes darkness. Midnight tundra, represent! Feels like I can’t see anything, and yet at the same time, like I can see everything with a harsh and painful clarity.
Maybe I just wish I couldn’t see anything.
This is what happens when because of depression, the only light you have is the bright but savage light of supposed logic and reason.
So much power, and yet it gives no warmth.
And of course, with all of that, I feel so very very alone. Like the entire human race is impossibly far away. Like they are on a completely different plane of reality from me, and only cold logic tells me they are still out there somewhere, all seven billion of them, living their lives in the sunshine and warmth they have always known, oblivious to the darkness that surrounds them,
And that’s a good thing. Let strange folk like me patrol the shadows. They can stay in the light and never know what lurks in the dark.
Hmmm. Idea : a group of (super)heroes known as the Shadow Patrol.
The good news is that at least now, these chemical based negative states of mind don’t overpower me. They don’t corrupt my entire sense of reality. I know that it’s just random neurochemical bullshit that means nothing about anything.
And like the weather, it will soon pass.
Most importantly, I know it means nothing about me. Any negative feeling I might have towards myself when in this state are merely depression’s distortions of that mirror image of the false self and reflect absolutely nothing about the real me.
After all, funhouse mirrors don’t make you any fatter. Or taller.
I am still the amazing and astounding critter I have always been. No amount of fog or darkness can dim the bright and shiny star of my overflowing outpouring soul.
All they can do is get in between me and the mirror.
And my mirror sucks. It’s all bent and cracked and warped from all the contortions my depression has put it through in order to keep the image of me congruent with its self destructive agenda and dogma.
It preserved its pretensions of accuracy by hijacking my powerful engines of analysis and insight and saying “See? These are highly accurate. See how good a telescope and microscope this mirror makes? Well then everything it shows must be true!”.
Yeah right. I will keep the crystal clear photographs but you can throw the rest out the window because it’s all a fucking lie.
You might think you have me pegged, Depression, but you don’t.
You don’t even know me at all.
More after the break.
Told ya so!
Feeling somewhat better now. As I predicted.
Was somewhat tricky getting the motivation together to get showered and go out to do my usual Sunday shopping and socializing.
Managed to scrape together enough fuel to achieve escape velocity on Planet Depression this time, but one day soon I know gravity’s gonna win and I will be too depressed to go out.
And I will say something vague about not feeling well, and it won’t be a lie, exactly. Because I will feel unwell.
But odds are, the real culprit is depression. Physical ailments might contribute to the depression, but it will be the depression that makes me feel like leaving the apartment is pure shrieking madness and therefore absolutely impossible.
I mean, gun to my head, I could do it. But that’s about it.
And that’s why it’s so hard to be close to someone with depression. Sometimes those steel shutters will come down and we will be off in our own private hell and if you happen to be connected to us at the time, you might lose a limb. We will freeze you out completely whether we want to or not, and nothing you can do will prevent it.
There was this insipid post on Facebook where someone said something like, “Break a leg and people line up to sign the cast. But tell someone you have depression, and everybody pulls away. ”
They’re not the same thing, Helen. A person with a broken leg doesn’t suck the life out of you just by being around. They don’t give people a glimpse of the infinite darkness that surrounds their well lit world. They don’t make people feel helpless and hopeless. And most importantly, they don’t make them feel like you will take them down with you.
Insanity is terrifying, even in the relatively undramatic form it takes with depression. Even very casual contact with someone involves a mental connection, and the vibe people get from that empathic connection when they are around depressed people makes them fear for their lives.
It’s not right. But they’re not wrong.
It really is dangerous to be around us. Insanity is not literally contagious, but it can be psychologically contagious because being around insanity can drive you insane.
No wonder some of us learn to bury that shit really deep and only show the world the happy shiny face of someone who is funny and cute and fun to be around.
Like I have said many times before, it’s not that Fruvous is not the real me.
He’s just not all of me.
And under the fluff and the warmth and the cuddliness lies the all-devouring darkness of the interstellar void. And in that void there is a tiny little planet. And on that planet there is a tiny little fortress. And in that tiny little fortress there is a tiny little room. And in that room there is a tiny little box. And in that box there is a tiny little cage. And in that cage is a tiny little man, sitting all alone in that cold dark box.
That tiny little man is the real me too.
Turns out there’s more than one.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.