Depression

“I've been walking dead
Watching you
Long enough to know I can't go on…”
-Flyleaf

There's a duality to depression:  the pain that fills you up and the emptiness that hollows you out.  It's like a tidal wave that crushes down on you and then washes you away.  It drags you back to the shore and then crushes you again.  Rinse and repeat, literally.  And as you're pulled apart and slammed back together by the current, less and less of you is reformed as the water erodes at your breath and your bones.

The truth is, I've been deteriorating for a long time now, long before I even died.  Depression has been digging at me ever since I was young.  It's come in cycles, dictated by the huge trials and small victories I've experienced throughout my short life.  Death has only deepened the already present sadness.  Lately, I've been going through periods of intense pain followed by bouts of crippling apathy.  There are days when I feel so selfish, so victimized, that I just want to be left alone.  There are days when I don't care who lives or dies.  There are days when I'm desperate for companionship, to have someone to talk to and understand me.  There are times when I feel too much and times when I feel nothing at all.  I wish I could express the swirling emotional content that gets stuck in my throat and in my stomach but there's really nothing to say that would adequately articulate what's happening inside of me.   What can be said that hasn't already been lamented by the lifeless?  Although everyone will grieve in a different way, Emily Dickinson came eerily close to how I feel with her poem (even inspiring my blog title):

Pain has an element of blank;
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there were
A day when it was not.

It has no future but itself,
Its infinite realms contain
Its past, enlightened to perceive
New periods of pain.

It's almost as if that element of blank is your body's own defense mechanism to counteract the pain, a way of preserving what little nerves are left.  The agony is so intense that the body deadens the spinal cord so as to protect from the pain.  Unfortunately, the body is not a perfect mechanism and instead of releasing enough pain killers to ease the suffering, all feeling is completely wiped out.  This causes a dramatic shift in the perception of pain and numbness.  As the dueling ache and emptiness battle each other within you, you're pulled into different directions in a matter of seconds, swirling in a torrent of feelings too erratic for the body to have time to fully adjust to, which leads to little control over yourself.  It's frustrating and only sends your emotions into even more turmoil.  It's maddening to go from anger to tears to maniacal laughter in one sweep.

One of the most frustrating parts about being so empty is the residual resolve to connect with someone.  It's the kind of feeling that never totally goes away.  It's natural to want to be social as a human.  It's as commonplace as lungs and teeth.  It's just there within us.  But, when you're hollowed out, that desire is dulled but not completely cauterized.  Dead people were once human, after all.  And when you find yourself in that in between glass state of undeadness like I am, perished but not passed on, the humanity is gone but not at all forgotten.  With all the reminders of connected people that we encounter, such as couples in relationships, friendships and family, it's natural that we would want to sway in that direction as well.  It is then that the sinking hiss reminds us that we cannot be like those people anymore and the rectifying numbness sets in once again except it isn't rectifying at all.  It only drives us deeper into the dark portals inside ourselves.

Death is the necrotizing fasciitis of feelings.  It eats away at your emotions and drinks in your dreams.  Once it has sucked you out of your body, it vomits out vitriol to fill the empty space.  Your body is just a sack of puke with no structure or strength.  And I've been walking around like a bag of barf over the past year.  Death is the kind of disease that can't be treated, something that only gets worse with time.  It will continue to eat away until there is nothing left, until you are nothing more than a carved out carcass left to wither away under the sun.

As I'm being consumed and I realize that I can do nothing to stop it, what am I supposed to think?  Where am I supposed to go?  Should I continue on until I literally can't take another step?  Should I stay stubborn and trek forward until death has taken all my limbs or should I lay myself down and let it finalize?  It all just seems so futile in the grand scheme of things.  There's no escaping death, after all.  It's only a race we begin as we're born.  Death is kind enough to give most of us a head start in our younger years but eventually it takes off, catches up to us and casts us off the track.  And when death has latched itself onto your back, you can fall to the floor or keep going until the weight of it drags you down and flattens you out.  Neither solution is too promising.  You're choice will only hasten or hinder the inevitability that you will not cross the finish line.

They say life is hard.  Death is harder.  Too hard for me, in fact.  If I could, I would just stay in bed forever.  There is nothing outside my bedroom that would do me any good.  There is no person, no food, no substance that will bring me back from oblivion.  Once you've dug deep enough inside yourself and clawed away at everything you are, you clamor for clarity.  It's like breaking through a wall only to discover a black hole on the other side.  This is me, this is what I've become, maybe what I've always been.  And I'm too weak to deal with it, too selfish to care enough to try, too broken too fight my ephemeral fate any longer...