happiness as a pipe dream
Depression is the perpetual feeling of the subway doors closing in your face and leaving you behind. Maybe, just maybe you could have made it, if you tried a little harder.
It takes itself in human form. Like an old friend or a past lover who knocks on your door as soon as they’re forgotten, and asks for your money, time — anything you have to offer. It can and will take it all.
It becomes your first priority and only commitment. There’s no reason to go out and live when you can stay in bed for days and days, hoping that something will change and fulfillment may be just a breath away.
It’s every open-ended question your family asks you about your future and how you’re living life in the present, as a running script in your head from the moment you wake up until the second you fall asleep, only to boil down to one question to rule them all: Does any of this even matter?
It’s the urgency you feel to run to the doctor and ask for something to numb the pain and stop making me feel this way. And when your friends ask you how you are or why you’re sad, you don’t even know how to explain it because you don’t even understand how you feel. You just want to stop feeling it.
It’s the strange looks you get from people who wonder if you’re just faking it or asking for attention because “everyone gets sad and anxious and that’s life.” It makes you feel bad for being sad because you shouldn’t be sad when people are dying in Africa.
And maybe everyone’s right. Maybe you shouldn’t be sad and maybe feelings are always going to be volatile no matter how good things are. And that’s what scares you the most.
Depression is the sinking feeling that no matter what changes, you will always feel this way.
