The 'Art' of Depression

A Story by Cierra

I haven't written anything like this in a long time, and I felt the need to write, and maybe see if anyone else has gone through these struggles.

When you’ve become so depressed, that even the most exciting news doesn’t excite you anymore, you begin to wonder if you’re far, too gone. You begin to wonder if your very existence is making any difference. You can’t justify offing yourself, but you justify living, either. You begin to wonder why everything around you is lifting back up, but you seem to be going deeper and deeper into the water, sinking to the darkest bottom of the ocean… Where there’s nothing. You have gotten so good at putting on a smile, and making people believe you’re genuinely happy, but you’re really torn apart inside, way past the point of repairable ability.

I scream but no one hears…. I cry, but no one can see my tears… I look at everyone around me, who’s happy and content, but I’m left with an void that doesn’t seem to shut. I’m left with this emptiness that’s stuck in the pit of my stomach, making me feel sick. My chest hurts and my eyes have run dry from crying. I look at my dogs and my cat… My family and my friends.. The beings that once brought me joy, but I can’t feel anything but sadness, now. Only a few can get me to smile, but that smile only reminds me of the lie I have been living. The very smile that I’ve perfected to hide how broken I really am.. I’ve tried reaching out for help and it only does so much; it’s like putting tape on a broken piece of glass, and saying it’s perfect.

Where do you go from there? How do you persevere through such a depression? When you get up every morning with every intention of making this a good day, and while you think you’ve succeeded, you’re still struggling with the same issues you had the day before, there’s still no success. You try every single day to fix the issues but no matter what you do, they can’t or wont be fixed. And if you do, a bigger problem comes along and plows all of your efforts into a grave. You pray and pray, hoping that God will hear you, and maybe he does… Maybe he helps you for a little while, only to feel like you’ve fallen again, and he’s let go of you, like a child, brand new to training wheels, not quite ready to be without them. You try to trust… But you can’t. You try to have faith that you can get through this by the ‘grace of God’, but he’s no where to be seen. Because you’re so blinded by this illness of depression, that you only see black.

Maybe that’s all depression really is… It’s a black void that masks every little bit of good in your life, to the point where everything you do is no longer good enough. And when people help you, you’re just sucked back into this web of lies and hate that you’ve created. Maybe the people on the outside are the ones screaming, and you’re too far gone to notice that they’re lending out their hand? But how can you hear them when you can’t even hear yourself? The words that run through your head every day, the devil that sucks the life from your body and the emotion from your being is grinning with his sharp teeth and pointy horns.. The Devil… We have this perception of religion that could make everything bad go away, or everything good be taken from you. There’s an unnatural balance that we have created that can either make someone feel better about themselves, or make them feel enslaved to the cruelty that this world has to bring.

I’m writing this because I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no in between and there never will be. There’s either content in the happiness your have, or self-loathing that leads to heartache and a puddle of tears and broken hearts. The in between is where people go to escape reality… Trying to feel things that aren’t real, subjecting themselves to whatever pain comes their way with just a small bit of happiness. I’ve been there for too long… My own personal purgatory has become my own personal hell that I can’t seem to escape. So here’s my question…

Where do you go from there?