Parasite

Sometimes I try to remember what I was like before this. What did it feel like to not feel like I'm drowning all the time. 

The dictionary defines depression as "feelings of severe despondency and dejection.". I think the dictionary is either misinformed, or just too polite.  As a person struggling, I can say from experience that it's much worse. 

It's a cancer. It's a crawling, growing, insidious intruder, hell bent on sucking every ounce of life out of you until you're nothing more than a shell.  You're a living being, but you're not alive, you just take up space. It's going through your life being able to see and hear everything, but doing so from inside a bubble. It's feeling like you've been tied to a chair and tossed in the water, and everyone is yelling at you to swim. Just swim.

I look in the mirror now and don't recognize the person staring back at me.  I go through the motions of living, but it takes so much fucking effort to do it. Getting out of bed in the morning feels monumental. I left my chair for the first time in three days today, and it felt strange to function, like I'm an alien just learning to navigate Earth. My body screams at me to get up, be productive, go socialize, HAVE FUCKING FUN, but my mind has me chained to the chair. I'm bored, and lonely, and so crazy jealous of those who are actually living that I'm making myself sick. 

My friends reach out to me, and during the rare times that I actually pick up the phone, I have to fake my way through the conversation. How do I explain...this..to an outsider? There's no possible way that they could understand if I tried to tell them. You'd have to go through this to get it.  I've started to avoid Poppa's calls- he's started video calling me during the day and I'm too embarrassed about my appearance to get on. It's getting too hard to fake it with him because he knows me too well, and he's the one person who hits my 'cry' button with annoying accuracy. I don't want pity or judgement or condescending 'self help' ideas. Trust me when I say that no amount of 'exercise' is gonna fix me, and 'snapping out of it' isn't really a thing. Same goes for church and reading inspirational quotes.  I can wipe my ass with the both of them.

If I'm not numb, I'm sad or angry.  The anger reminds me that I'm still alive, but who wants to live as a shitty, angry person? The sadness attacks out of nowhere- standing in line at the grocery store or driving down the road, and there are the tears. This is not something I would wish upon my worst enemy.  

 I feel like I'm suffocating. Like I'm on my own little island, completely isolated, but right next to home, and I'm just not allowed or able to step over the line. My home life suffers, my relationships suffer...I met a nice guy and don't have it in me to even give him a chance because I just can't. But I so fucking want to. I feel trapped in this and it makes me so angry at myself, and I know I can't blame myself, but it's in my genetic makeup to have this bullshit chemical imbalance, so how do I not? 

Mostly, I'm just afraid. I'm scared that I will never come out of this, and it will slowly suffocate me to death.. and when I do die, I'll be all alone.

This is what Hell on Earth feels like.