My Definition of Depression

There are various clinical diagnostic definitions of depression, but those words–strung together by PhDs sitting in a fancy office sipping their vanilla cream non-fat, toss the whip cream, three ice-cubed caramel lattes–do not even attempt to portray the darky murky waters of depression. The words merely sum up the hindsight of healed but not the purgatory of the afflicted. How can they describe the feelings of hopelessness and inadequacy and the voices that pound through the brain and into the very cells that fabricate my identity. Worthless. The feelings of just not being good enough and the helplessness of being unable to dictate my own emotions or of being unable to feel “normally”; when knowing it’s uncontrollable but still harbouring a deep rooted hatred against myself for “not being able to knock myself out of it”. Knowing happiness is just a choice away, but remain paralysed in angst and anguish and there the conflict begins. Damaged. Plastering a smile on my stone-blank face until it becomes “natural” and no longer is there a line between fake and real but fake becomes real and real becomes fake. When all I want is to push people away but desperately needing them to stay. I am a contradiction, a riddle within my own walls. Broken. When I start labelling my days as “good days” or “bad days” and being afraid to open my eyes in the light of the early morning because I’m terrified and exhausted of “bad days”. When my emotions hinge on a broken axel and the slightest breeze spins me around and takes me on a wild carousel ride with a soundtrack of maniacal laughter in a desert wasteland with undertones of burbling sobs and crackling ice. Depressed.