Depression

Sometimes I cry. I cry for myself, for strangers, for happy things, for sad things, and currently for people suffering from depression. Depression is a horrible illness. It is common, subtle, and stigmatized--it's like a sweet smelling poison. It taints everything that it touches, it puts the blame on yourself, it takes beautiful complex people and reduces them to lifeless husks.

It scares me and I hate it.

If depression were a person, I'd punch them. But depression is a person, it hides in many of the people you love and eats their person-hood from the inside out. And sometimes you can tell its there, and you want to punch it, but you can't cause your friend, lover, family member is in there too. Trapped as an unwilling host, but utterly convinced that they aren't. That they want to be there, they want to feel this way, there is nothing for them. And it simply isn't true.

I am so afraid for my friend's lives, for my life, for my ex-boyfriend's life. I live in fear that he's going to kill himself, so cut off from the world at this point. Utterly hopeless. I'm afraid for him. I'm afraid for me too--because I know that part of me will feel relieved. It makes me feel sick. But he is my first love, and my love is strong. Just because we needed to break up, doesn't mean I want him to have a bad life.

I would have jumped in front of a hundred trains, taken a hundred bullets, walked into the very flames of hell if it could have somehow brought you happiness. But that isn't what you want, you are a passenger to your depression, but that's the way you want it to be. You are an adult, you push me away, you hurt me, because you want to be alone. And I don't have anymore options left.

I was so sick too. I was sick like you. We were hurting each other. Sometimes at night when I go to bed it hurts me to think about never touching your beautiful body again. But then it hurts me to think about actually touching your body again. And I remember that I made the right choice. This was a choice that you and I wanted. That person I want to touch doesn't exist anymore. He has been replaced by an insensitive, alcoholic, asshole. That person is sick and wants to be that way.

I was sick like you. But I worked hard to feel better. I sank down to the bottom. Through diarrhea, vomiting, self-harm, obsessions, debilitating rage and sadness, feeling faint, bad acne, bad living situations. And I worked hard. So that even on bad days I know that there's a way up again. And I just want you to see that. I want you to see that light at the end of the tunnel. Even when our tunnels have long since diverged. Even when we have loved and lived many years out in the space-time continuum. I want to know that you have blossomed into that beautiful person that was always so evident to me. Not the dark passenger everyone else sees. The real you underneath it all.

And since it is impossible for me to know at this point what the future holds, or what you're really thinking anymore, I must let time be the judge. I will use my feelings as the standard while I search for love again. And I don't think it will be long before love finds my heart again.