Depression is...

A Story by kayleigh

Depression feels like a demon that knows you've had adequate amount of sleep but tries everything in its power to drag you back to bed.

Depression is unsocial, a loner, & once it possesses you the fear of seeing people or having to interact with people is paralyzing, you feel a lead ball weight in your chest that prevents you from focusing on the smallest of tasks, let alone actually engaging with someone. It's like a short term pit of despair that you know will end, & you want it to end, but the things you could or should do to drag yourself out of it, you don't want to do. You retreat into the safety of solitude to wallow in the dark pit of unjoy.

You enjoy the small things within this pocket of time, such as listening to your body & hiding, because right at that point of time, that's all you want to do.

Your mind feels foggy & you physically feel the weight of it weighing down on your shoulders & eyelids like a plague that just wants to send you into eternal darkness.

You know today could have been different, you look outside & think I could have woken up happy, I could be bouncing with energy & excited about the day, but that very thought just makes you feel sick, because it's the last thing you want to do.

You stare into nothingness until your vision goes blurry, not even having the energy to stimulate the muscle in your face to activate, so you sit there looking glum & enjoying it because it would take too much to inject a smile onto your face.

Anxiety kicks in when you feel you have to pretend, when you feel you have to engage in conversation, when you have to force a smile on your face just to plaster over what you're really feeling so you don't have to explain yourself. How can you explain something that doesn't actually make logical sense to you? Logically, you would want to be happy, depression forces you to listen to your actual needs - & they don't necessarily make sense.

So you continue through the day & project your feelings towards other people, becoming hateful in your mind to strangers, judging them so harshly by what they are doing or wearing or saying, which you usually wouldn't think twice about. It twists every situation into a ball of hate, that only you can see & you plunge deeper into depression, convinced that you're a bad person for thinking all these terrible things. Depression is like a wave that you have no choice but to ride, until it is bored enough to loosen it's grip on you & you continue as normal until it decides to play again.

'You've woken up on the wrong side of the bed' if only it were that simple to just climb back in & snap out of it.