I came to Cane?s beach today. As much as I hate the sand, it has become my thinking spot.
Watching the water is so relaxing to me, even if being in it can give me anxiety.
One day I?ll be a stronger swimmer. One day I won?t be so afraid.
One day.
I watched the waves crash, the water lick the shoreline, and I wanted to go to it. I wanted to do more than dip my toes in; I wanted to submerge myself. I wanted to be engulfed in the water and weightless. I just wanted to float in a cocoon of water. I wanted to feel nothing but safe and protected. I wanted a quiet calm to wash over me, one that I can?t seem to find today.
If I had tried, if someone saw? I know what they would think. After all, I am only human. If I told someone I wanted to throw myself into the water and not come back up, they?d think I was crazy, that I wanted to kill myself.
I don?t, I just want a break. I don?t want to experience today, I want to jump to tomorrow, or maybe the day after. But today? Today is hard. Today is pain, and I am tired.
There are things that no one ever tells you about depression.
Like the fact that you can be perfectly happy, happier than you have ever been, and you can still be depressed.
You may just wake up one day and it?s like inexplicably the light switch has been flipped off and no matter how many times you flick it up and down, the lights are not coming on. It can last hours, days, months. When it hits, you may not know if you?ll ever see light again. Everything sort of closes in on you and although you?ve been here before, it?s hard to look at it objectively and know that you?ll be okay. Your field of vision becomes smaller and smaller until you are consumed and all you have is your depression and whatever it allows you to see through it?s smudged and dirty lenses.
Suddenly all thoughts are jumbled and the irrational becomes the rational and those thoughts, awful as they may be, you can?t escape them. They become your truths. Insane truths that any other time you?d scoff at but now you cling to them even when they are covered in thorns and hurt you. You will believe anything your brain tells you and you will refuse to believe that it?s all lies. No one will be able to convince you otherwise. You will hurt the people you love the most just to show them how right you are about the lies. You will recognize the lies but will favor them over anything else simply because you can?t escape them, maybe because you?re too tired to fight them. You can?t think of a time when anything else will make sense again. And so you sit and you obsess over the same thing, over and over, wearing it down thin like a security blanket only to turn it over and wrap yourself in a new one, trying to seek comfort in that pit of lies. The depths are endless, surfacing doesn?t seem like something that will ever happen.
You may go between feeling everything and nothing and switch between these two spectrums multiple times, sometimes in the course of just an hour. Feeling nothing can be the most blessed thing, but it can also be so painful, a maze of nothing that you feel like you will never find your way out of. It?s terrifying. It?s lonely.
Depression isn?t just feeling sad. The television shows, books, movies, they always portray depression as someone who is just sad. A lonely heart healed by love. A void easily filled. A new puppy, a job, money, some other easy fix and suddenly the sad is gone. Take a pill. Get some sunshine. Change perspectives. It?s so easy. If you don?t want to be depressed, you won?t be. That?s what they?d have you believe.
Depression is so much more than being sad.
Depression isn?t even just depression. It?s anxiety, insane thoughts, peculiar reactions, flares of anger, it?s nonsensical. Sudden highs and terrifying lows. It?s physical pain manifested in aching joints, a heart that feels broken, and stabbing pains all over; headaches and burning eyes. It?s the ability to sleep for days on end or to not sleep at all. It?s a racing heart and breath that you can?t catch. It?s laying in bed and watching eight season of a show you hate and have no interest in but you can?t find the motivation to move one finger and press a button. It?s a cleaning frenzy at three a.m. with bleeding fingers and nausea from the chemicals. It?s a fake smile. It?s carrying on like nothing is wrong. It?s me. It?s the person you love most. No one is an exception. Depression wears a million faces and none of them experience it just the same.
Depression doesn?t have a cure and as much as I wish it was, a person, love, is not a cure. People are band-aids. Love is a salve. The wound, however? It doesn?t heal. Sometimes it gets smaller, sometimes it bleeds less, and sometimes it doesn?t even hurt. Other times it?s gaping and infected and it takes over your body, your life. Sometimes the people around you stay and they help that sore to be less painful, they bandage you up and remind you that you are loved. They love you when you can?t possibly love yourself.
Other times they go. When they leave it?s so rarely that they do so because of you, but because they think they make your struggle worse or they are scared and don?t know how to help. Some will not want to love you. Some will not know how to love you. Depression doesn?t understand that though and so you will think that they left because you are too much, too much everything and not enough at the same time. You will remember everyone that left and obsess over why and what you could have done differently while forgetting those that are there and trying. You will say things you don?t mean, express fears as though they are happening, and find ways to create issues out of nothing. You will try to distance yourself to protect others and other times may unload your entire story on anyone that will listen. And then you will punish yourself for being a burden.
Punishment. It has many forms. You may beat yourself up mentally and refuse yourself to be happy, to have hope, to view yourself as something other than broken and unworthy. Some days you may eat until you make yourself sick, other days you may starve yourself until you have no strength. Scratching, cutting, biting, hitting, tearing out your own hair, these may happen as well. Maybe you think you deserve it, maybe the physical pain is easier to digest, maybe you just want to feel something, you want to control something, or you are so overwhelmed you don?t know how else to shake off all of that anxiety and nervous energy. You will push people, sometimes push them away because you don?t deserve them, you want to protect them from the ugliness inside of you, you are better off alone. Some days, seeing your reflection is too much and so you avoid mirrors, even glass so that you don?t glimpse yourself.
Some days you will have small successes. Bathing yourself, putting on real clothes, leaving the house, these things feel like climbing mountains when depression hits. Other days your successes will be bigger. Some days, maybe many days, you won?t feel the effects of your depression at all.
What is so hard to live through, though, is other people not understanding. They can?t see your illness and so it?s hard to believe it exists. Even if they believe it, they don?t understand how it can impact every facet of your life. How can something as small as brushing your own teeth be an accomplishment? How can feeling ?down? exhaust you? Really, you can?t leave the house again? There are times you will be left behind, times you may be forgotten, times people will assume there is no reason to bother asking you to come along, after all, you will decline.
Some will treat you as though you are broken, some will think you are so fragile that they will be afraid, some will mock you, some will not be able to forgive you for the things you do and say when your head is not right.
Some will love you through it.
Some will tell you that you are not too hard to love.
You will remember it all.
This is my place to remember it all.
I have been here before. I will be here again.
Watching the water is so relaxing to me, even if being in it can give me anxiety.
One day I?ll be a stronger swimmer. One day I won?t be so afraid.
One day.
I watched the waves crash, the water lick the shoreline, and I wanted to go to it. I wanted to do more than dip my toes in; I wanted to submerge myself. I wanted to be engulfed in the water and weightless. I just wanted to float in a cocoon of water. I wanted to feel nothing but safe and protected. I wanted a quiet calm to wash over me, one that I can?t seem to find today.
If I had tried, if someone saw? I know what they would think. After all, I am only human. If I told someone I wanted to throw myself into the water and not come back up, they?d think I was crazy, that I wanted to kill myself.
I don?t, I just want a break. I don?t want to experience today, I want to jump to tomorrow, or maybe the day after. But today? Today is hard. Today is pain, and I am tired.
There are things that no one ever tells you about depression.
Like the fact that you can be perfectly happy, happier than you have ever been, and you can still be depressed.
You may just wake up one day and it?s like inexplicably the light switch has been flipped off and no matter how many times you flick it up and down, the lights are not coming on. It can last hours, days, months. When it hits, you may not know if you?ll ever see light again. Everything sort of closes in on you and although you?ve been here before, it?s hard to look at it objectively and know that you?ll be okay. Your field of vision becomes smaller and smaller until you are consumed and all you have is your depression and whatever it allows you to see through it?s smudged and dirty lenses.
Suddenly all thoughts are jumbled and the irrational becomes the rational and those thoughts, awful as they may be, you can?t escape them. They become your truths. Insane truths that any other time you?d scoff at but now you cling to them even when they are covered in thorns and hurt you. You will believe anything your brain tells you and you will refuse to believe that it?s all lies. No one will be able to convince you otherwise. You will hurt the people you love the most just to show them how right you are about the lies. You will recognize the lies but will favor them over anything else simply because you can?t escape them, maybe because you?re too tired to fight them. You can?t think of a time when anything else will make sense again. And so you sit and you obsess over the same thing, over and over, wearing it down thin like a security blanket only to turn it over and wrap yourself in a new one, trying to seek comfort in that pit of lies. The depths are endless, surfacing doesn?t seem like something that will ever happen.
You may go between feeling everything and nothing and switch between these two spectrums multiple times, sometimes in the course of just an hour. Feeling nothing can be the most blessed thing, but it can also be so painful, a maze of nothing that you feel like you will never find your way out of. It?s terrifying. It?s lonely.
Depression isn?t just feeling sad. The television shows, books, movies, they always portray depression as someone who is just sad. A lonely heart healed by love. A void easily filled. A new puppy, a job, money, some other easy fix and suddenly the sad is gone. Take a pill. Get some sunshine. Change perspectives. It?s so easy. If you don?t want to be depressed, you won?t be. That?s what they?d have you believe.
Depression is so much more than being sad.
Depression isn?t even just depression. It?s anxiety, insane thoughts, peculiar reactions, flares of anger, it?s nonsensical. Sudden highs and terrifying lows. It?s physical pain manifested in aching joints, a heart that feels broken, and stabbing pains all over; headaches and burning eyes. It?s the ability to sleep for days on end or to not sleep at all. It?s a racing heart and breath that you can?t catch. It?s laying in bed and watching eight season of a show you hate and have no interest in but you can?t find the motivation to move one finger and press a button. It?s a cleaning frenzy at three a.m. with bleeding fingers and nausea from the chemicals. It?s a fake smile. It?s carrying on like nothing is wrong. It?s me. It?s the person you love most. No one is an exception. Depression wears a million faces and none of them experience it just the same.
Depression doesn?t have a cure and as much as I wish it was, a person, love, is not a cure. People are band-aids. Love is a salve. The wound, however? It doesn?t heal. Sometimes it gets smaller, sometimes it bleeds less, and sometimes it doesn?t even hurt. Other times it?s gaping and infected and it takes over your body, your life. Sometimes the people around you stay and they help that sore to be less painful, they bandage you up and remind you that you are loved. They love you when you can?t possibly love yourself.
Other times they go. When they leave it?s so rarely that they do so because of you, but because they think they make your struggle worse or they are scared and don?t know how to help. Some will not want to love you. Some will not know how to love you. Depression doesn?t understand that though and so you will think that they left because you are too much, too much everything and not enough at the same time. You will remember everyone that left and obsess over why and what you could have done differently while forgetting those that are there and trying. You will say things you don?t mean, express fears as though they are happening, and find ways to create issues out of nothing. You will try to distance yourself to protect others and other times may unload your entire story on anyone that will listen. And then you will punish yourself for being a burden.
Punishment. It has many forms. You may beat yourself up mentally and refuse yourself to be happy, to have hope, to view yourself as something other than broken and unworthy. Some days you may eat until you make yourself sick, other days you may starve yourself until you have no strength. Scratching, cutting, biting, hitting, tearing out your own hair, these may happen as well. Maybe you think you deserve it, maybe the physical pain is easier to digest, maybe you just want to feel something, you want to control something, or you are so overwhelmed you don?t know how else to shake off all of that anxiety and nervous energy. You will push people, sometimes push them away because you don?t deserve them, you want to protect them from the ugliness inside of you, you are better off alone. Some days, seeing your reflection is too much and so you avoid mirrors, even glass so that you don?t glimpse yourself.
Some days you will have small successes. Bathing yourself, putting on real clothes, leaving the house, these things feel like climbing mountains when depression hits. Other days your successes will be bigger. Some days, maybe many days, you won?t feel the effects of your depression at all.
What is so hard to live through, though, is other people not understanding. They can?t see your illness and so it?s hard to believe it exists. Even if they believe it, they don?t understand how it can impact every facet of your life. How can something as small as brushing your own teeth be an accomplishment? How can feeling ?down? exhaust you? Really, you can?t leave the house again? There are times you will be left behind, times you may be forgotten, times people will assume there is no reason to bother asking you to come along, after all, you will decline.
Some will treat you as though you are broken, some will think you are so fragile that they will be afraid, some will mock you, some will not be able to forgive you for the things you do and say when your head is not right.
Some will love you through it.
Some will tell you that you are not too hard to love.
You will remember it all.
This is my place to remember it all.
I have been here before. I will be here again.