An excerpt from my journal in third person. Warning: This is not one of my most pleasant posts nor positive in its attitude. But i wanted to share my struggle with depression.
She wakes up at 6:45am, worried she didn’t get enough sleep. She tossed and turned most of the night and when you add it up. She usually gets six hours of sleep. Not nearly enough she thinks to herself. She rushes in and out of the shower, worrying she’ll be late for class. She doesn’t feel like going anywhere. The more time she’s in the shower the more time she thinks about all the ways today could go horribly wrong. She tries to fix her hair for the day, but she feels as though it looks hideous no matter what and, in the end, pins it up with 50 bobby pins or covers it up with a hat. She gets in the car worried there won’t be enough gas to get to class. Mostly because she’s down to her last $15 and her paycheck doesn’t come till next week. She wouldn’t have enough time to stop for gas anyway because now she’s running 10 minutes late. Nothing ever seems to go right for her. She happens to glance at the left side tire and sees its almost flat again. She doesn’t have enough time to drive down to the gas station three minutes out of the way to fill it with air. Consequently, she’s also out of quarters to fund the 75 cents required. So she drives to class, with an almost flat tire. In a panicky mood about all of the above and what could possibly come next. She knows something bad will happen on the way, nothing ever goes right. This makes her sad, uncontrollably upset and depressed. The fact that there’s nothing she can do. Whether the tire blows or someone yells at her. She feels on the cliff of emotions, something will have broken her to bits by noon. She gets to class with an eager desire to leave again. She almost does, but convinces herself otherwise. Finding a seat is a nightmare and makes her feel so self-conscious. The lecture begins with the same boring lesson we learned last class and continues to carry on for an hour. She fidgets her fingers anxiously. The sign in sheet is passed around the room for students to be counted for attendance. She signs in but sees that as the sheet comes up the row on the other side of the room, it is not passed to everyone and some don’t see it. This makes her feel angry and annoyed. She wonders how people are so stupid they can’t even pass a piece a paper around a room properly. The thought consumes her mind for the rest of the class and how much it irritates her. Class comes to an end and all she can think about is how much she would like to go back to bed. She goes home. She eats a snack, but only if her stomach isn’t completely tied in knots like it typically is. She sleeps for an hour, because she has no energy to do anything else. She wakes and changes for work. She use to put on makeup but gave up because she didn’t feel like it made her feel any better about herself. She tries to look happy so no one figures it out at work. She knows she has to work a faking it all the time, but at work its much easier considering no one really knows her. Fake it till you make it has become her unconscious life motto. No one notices she isn’t laughing or telling jokes like she usually does. Work can be slightly stressful sometimes for her, but she always reminds herself its only three hours every week day. Besides, she may not feel herself. But at least she’s making a difference in the kid’s lives, right? Work is over, she drags her feet to her car exhausted from all she put into those three hours. She turns on the radio to drown out the sound of her own cry. Simply because its usually a reaction she does when she’s alone. She doesn’t know why, she just knows its a cause for the pain she feels. She’s lonely, but that’s not the reason for her tears. She’s been holding it all in, waiting for the moment when she can just let go of herself and not hide it for just a little while. She doesn’t think about killing herself often. But she thinks about dying a lot. What if this? What if that? Often these questions come to her mind in relation to death. She worries on the way home. She never did get gas earlier. She never did put air in the tire. She never found any quarters. She can’t make a decision about whether to stop either. She can’t make decisions at all nowadays. Its too much to handle for her most of the time. Even the smallest decisions feel like a burden for her. She gets a headache several times a day from all the thinking she does. Sometimes she’ll pop an advil or an aleve every so often that way she can prevent them from happening. She worries if she might be abusing them though. The aleve helps with the headaches, but it doesn’t stop everything else that’s hurting. The questions, the decisions, the lies, the mess, the future, it all makes her hurt. She feels like she’s carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. Sometimes at night, she sits and prays someone will save her from the pain. She knows she can’t make it stop on her own. It gets so bad every now and then she thinks about taking something sharp to her arm. She hasn’t done that in while. She keeps telling herself she won’t. But each time she thinks of it, she feels as though she gets closer and closer to doing it. She cancels plans with friends. They can’t see her not put together. They can’t know what she’s going through. No one understands. No one cares, they have their own problems to deal with. She feels like she’s had to hide enough today, and doesn’t feel like she could keep herself together for even an hour. She fears she might loose it in front of someone one day. Even though she’s not sure what loosing it would look like. She goes to bed, terrified of the challenges tomorrow has already burdened her with.
Why does she keep this hidden? For fear that people will know she’s really messed up. That she is in a million pieces most of the time. Don’t get her wrong, she has good days often. So, don’t pity her, she’ll make it in the end. Feel free to ask questions.
He’s Always Enough,
Liberty Stripped of her Pride
Liberty Stripped of her Pride 