Trivia with Depression
That night I felt alive after a long time. I have Murakami to thank for it, I guess.
Welcome to one of those phases of my life:
“You’re not good enough!”, the thought- monster whispered in my ear, taking an abode in my head.
Don’t pay any attention to him. Distract yourself.
“Listen to me. You’re nobody! You don’t matter!”
Don’t listen to him. Engage yourself.
“No matter how much you try, you will always remain a failure.”
Ouch! That hurt. That’s not true. Fight him. Punch him. Assassinate him.
“You’re fucked up. You won’t be able to give any happiness. A depressed soul is what you will always be. “
<I am losing control over him now as I hear his malicious laughter. He doesn’t leave>
“You should be disgusted by yourself!”
Do something! Don’t succumb! Switch the music on. Call your friends. Watch a movie!
“You don’t matter. You’re a waste of space.”
It’s not helping. His laughter overpowers all the noise in the background. Someone save me from this demon, already.
“This time you get depressed, no one will fucking come and save you. No one can.”
Now, he has started to poison me. I feel alone, and, unfortunately, he is the only one to give me some company. The darkness engulfs me further.
“Let me break it to you. Those dreams that you have.. they mean nothing. You’re too insignificant to do anything worthy.”
I slowly start curling up like a baby, so lost and petrified in the underground den that I create for myself. Relationships start getting affected. Existence feels like a burden and every moment becomes a struggle.
My folks take notice of the situation. “You don’t seem to be okay. Talk to us. What happened? Let’s go for a walk. We’re here for you. Don’t be alone.”
I don’t let them reach out to me. Instead, I do everything to push them away.
“Mission accomplished! I win, yet again!”, he screamed in glory.
This feeling becomes really familiar, being numb and tired, and the worst emotion ever made on this planet, being hopeless. It’s been quite some time. I am on the verge of giving up now. On myself. On my dreams. On everything. I want to explode into a million pieces and dissolve.
Then, unexpectedly this is what I come across:
“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That’s the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.
And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You’ll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood, and the blood of others. And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what the storm is all about.”
I read it. Once. Twice. Thrice. I feel some strength coming back at me. I get up from the bed, take a shower, and change my clothes.
I grab a pen and start writing:
“My depression is like stage fright: complete with cold hands and trembling legs, a dry mouth, an aching stomach and a heart that’s racing as if the ground below my feet were disappearing. Only here, the stage is every inch of the floor outside my room, the performance lasts the whole day, and every person I meet is a judge. Sometimes, trying to keep me from overthinking is like trying to close a door against the strength of twenty men who are pushing it from the other direction, and a few of them already have a leg, an arm or a head inside.
My anxiety tells me that my friends don’t like me and that they stick around only because they’re nice people and they don’t want me to feel too bad, so I try not to cause much trouble for them. My anxiety tires me. But it doesn’t let me sleep at night. Sometimes there’s a voice in my head desperately pleading with me to run away from the place I’m at. It does not give me a reason so I cannot tell you why. Nor does it tell me where to go or how to get there.
My anxiety tells me that I’m a loser: for no matter what I win at in life, I have failed to conquer my thoughts and I believe that that doesn’t speak too highly of me, but I think that that’s okay; All of my fears and feelings can be explained in neat little diagrams and chemical equations, hormones and complex reactions. I tried to bring logic into the madness, and I’ve always believed that if there is logic to a problem, there is an algorithm to solve it so maybe I still have hope. Maybe I can fix this.
My body somehow got the wrong idea that there is danger lurking around the corner, so it was just preparing itself for any possible fight. Oh, I’m just a little fighter waiting for my chance to shine. I’m going to win. I’m going to be okay. I’m going to be okay. So, little fighter, go out and shine.”
That night I felt alive after a long time. I have Murakami to thank for it, I guess. Do you have those days? Days when you feel like a waste of space? Days when you just become anti-social, especially when you need people around? Days when solitude is not pleasant and light?
