Why I’m a hypocrite and what I remember of depression

I don’t remember how long I’ve felt sadness. Not the kind of sadness you feel after a pet dies or your ice cream plops off of the cone and onto the ground. I mean the type of sadness that takes residence in your chest and in your heart. The senseless kind that refuses to leave. The kind that just hangs over your head as if it were wrapped in a wet blanket. I mean legitimate depression. When I was little, in elementary school, 3rd grade I think, I would sit at my counter sometimes and just cry. I was very inexperienced with feelings and could not understand this sudden wave of empty sadness crashing down on me. I would cry for an hour sometimes, with my face resting on the marble kitchen counter. Sometimes my parents saw, and they would console me. They asked what was wrong. I don’t remember what I told them. Probably not much. I never have. Sometimes, I would sit there and I would imagine my parents dying. I had this picture in my head that always comes to mind. It’s simple. It’s burned into my brain. I will never forget it.

There is a young boy with dark brown hair. He can’t be older than 10. He stands before the foot of two caskets raised above two holes in the ground. It is gray and overcast outside. He is alone. The boy is wearing a sharp suit, and the wind ruffles his hair. His face is stolid and unchanging. He just stands and stares at the twin pits in the earth. There are no words. There isn’t even a feeling. There is nothing but blankess. He might as well have died with them.

When the symptoms first started with me, when I was younger, it was a lot of thinking about death. A subconscious urge to die, and a paralyzing fear of death. I became unable to enjoy the moment at hand, because I knew that someday I would be thrust into death’s cold embrace. I was scared. Blank. Sometimes scared, sometimes blank. Sometimes both. Sometimes neither. Sometimes absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing at all. I was mostly scared, though. I didn’t understand it. I was so young and emotionally naive and susceptible that I could not fully grasp the ramifications of the concepts I was mulling over. I don’t know if many children do at that age. But the horrible part was that as soon as it took root I couldn’t get it out of my head. I would lie awake at night terrified and sad, thinking about death. Unable to enjoy anything because I realized eventually I would enter the ultimate void and become absolute nothingness. Everything in my life would be invalidated by the passing through that door, and I could do absolutely nothing to stop it. As I grew, I became less afraid. I became less afraid as I started to feel less and less of anything at all.

“I am constantly torn between killing myself and killing everyone around me.”

― David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

I’ve become awfully pessimistic and cynical over the years, as well. My friend thinks I should read Will Grayson Will Grayson, that friend’s last name starts with an H. She tells me that, in that book, dryly non-optimistic, yet pragmatic theories on life similar to mine are articulated. I’m sure its an infinitesimally more interesting and better-written book than this. You should probably read it instead. If you’re still reading, keeping this story going with your mind-catalyst, here’s the similarity. I began to realize the moment always ends. It contradicts what I said before, I know. I began to realize with utterly depressing clarity how finite life and the happiness at hand are. See, I began to toss around the notion that death is inevitable. Yes, statistically not a sure thing, but it will most likely take me in the next 80 years if there are no major scientific breakthroughs. It became very hard to find pleasure in the right now of things because I realize that it would always end. Everything became a placeholder, killing time until you were the one being extinguished. How could you be happy knowing that the vastest and most consuming of all things known to man awaited you? Sex will end. Drugs will end. Love will end. Food will end. Happiness will end. So it made me think, if it ends, how can I enjoy it now? It will only be taken from me later. Why give myself a teasing taste of the tantalizing forbidden fruit of timeless pleasure? It led to a lot of unhappiness. A lot of blankess, too. Sometimes I covered my head with the blankets on my childhood bed and pretended nothing in the world existed. It was blissful.

I think a lack of emotion is infinitesimally less bearable than the deepest pain. The lack of feeling, the desire to return to the world where things hurt and things please is unbearable. It becomes a living hell. It becomes a waking limbo, and you don’t know if you will ever come unstuck. Guns and pills start to look awfully friendly. You wonder if maybe, just maybe, a bullet would translate your emptiness into genuine feeling, even for a fraction of a second. It would be a lifetime of pure feeling. You start to wonder really hard. I wondered a lot. I still wonder, sometimes. I tried a lot. That was a long time ago now.

I’m not dead, not that I’m aware of at least. All of my senses tell me I am still alive. I might be wrong. I don’t know. I’m pretty sure I’m as alive as I was yesterday and the day before. Who cares. I needn’t worry if I am deceased or not. It shouldn’t matter. It doesn’t.

Sadness has stuck to me like a tick to a barnyard animal. Destined to carry out my days with this bloodsucking little prick clinging to my back.

I used to write poetry a lot. About a year ago, I went through an emotionally-taxing break up that sent me spiraling into a whirlpool of drug abuse and self-harm that spanned several months. In that time, to preserve what faded scraps of sanity I still possessed, I wrote poetry. A lot of it was about being depressed. Here’s some of my work.

Sunny Side Up

“Yesterday my life was filled with rain

So please, ease the pain

My heart so cold

You with your action so bold

This is a broken place

Yesterday my life was filled with rain

So please, ease the pain

Another entered the scope

Never again turn to dope

Write on the mirror with a razor blade

Slowly, these thoughts will fade

Yesterday my life was filled with rain

So please, ease the pain

The devil in my head

Whispers like the voices of the dead

A heart, chiseled from stone

Never again will I feel so alone

Yesterday my life was filled with rain

So please, ease the pain

The raindrops, pouring down

Sizzling on my tear-stained cheeks and onto the ground

Falling to the distant earth

While you walk away, eyes full of mirth

Yesterday my life was filled with rain

So please, ease the pain

Ease the hurt etched in stone

Among darkness, roses bloom alone

Today my life is filled with rain

I cannot stop the pain”

Endless

“The stone cold tears, littered here

This shore so empty

The pen lies dead upon the table

Murdered by the reality of fable

But you cannot escape,

Not from this stable

This prison of mind

For what you will find

Are peculiar things

Long hidden away

Brought to the surface

To remind you their permanence will stay

Upturn your vivid lips

Show your teeth and smile

Embrace the blade as it kisses you

Put those scissors in your gums

Sing out loud and don’t be scared

This pain is only a figment of your fear

It isn’t real, it isn’t here

This comfortable release

Will help to piece

Back together both the crooked heart and broken home

Try to swim upstream without a paddle

This is foolish, you won’t win this battle

Fall into an upside down grave

Be brave

Never become a mental slave

Let that shovel spell out the future

As it writes out the deathly letters upon the past

Defining your future

Eternalize the pain in joy and swallow it whole

Carve that misery into a rainbow

Use that razor wit, sharp as blade

As it eviscerates flesh

Tearing mind from matter in the present

Because we live in the past

Fear the future

And know we won’t last

So embrace the symphony as it calls from behind

And direct your efforts sideways and narrow as your options multiply

Swallow the shoes

As they walk away in toes

Bury them deep down inside

Even seven feet wide

The rushing hours of the day

Sprint past, never seem to stay

The voices, always in your ear

“Do it, you’re not wanted here”

But “no!” you say

I am here to stay

This train has long since jumped track

My mind is on the loose

And never coming back”

Despicable

“I bleed my thoughts from my head

Spilled like bloody guts from this pen

Searching for a savior, not knowing when

Or how or when or why or why

Only that it is blood, not tears I cry

Searching, hands raised to the sky

I scream, why oh why

These brutal thoughts and angry notions

Never put my plan to motion

Always back, never here

Moving forward, nowhere near

Scream my throat red raw with pain

But never brings any gain

Impressing sorrows to my peers

Assuage the pain, stop my tears

Turned to ice inside my heart

My soul and mind once depart

Thrice unto their solid will

End this all with a bright red pill

Tumble to that stormy abyss

In the chaos find your bliss

Revel in the newfound love

Of loving nothing, like life with a glove

Buried deep above the ground

While outside the storm does pound

And rattle and shake and whine and moan

And batter the shingles of this sideways home”

Cut Your Hair With Scissors, Mind The Brain

“Slice my lips, cut my ears

I know that no one hears

The blood mingles with salty tears

That crisscross across my weathered face

So stitch my head back together with soft lace

Mend the flaps of angry skin

This is a battle I cannot win

Not alone, not with prayer or sin

Feel the piercing of the pin

Both the real and in my head

Look at the vomit on the floor, far too long I’ve bled

Sick as the walls painted bloody red

Doesn’t matter it’s all been said

I see the knife marks in this bed

I laid there helpless as I plead

Screamed my throat from my heart

As my face was sliced apart

And now I’m back beyond the start

A negative domain, leaving the battle on a cart

The feeling isn’t even tart, it stings

Much worse than the real-life things

All the blood I have to give,

Can’t amount to the pain in which I live

Perpetual and without end,

Terrible things wait around the bend

With their raspy whispers they send

For to them my soul to lend

And for it they offer and handsome price

Their crooning words do entice

Trapped alone inside a vice

Veins inside have turned to ice

My heart to stone, my bones to lead

I hear the calling of the dead

I am among them in my head

A resident of two realities

I wish these things came in threes

Then maybe I could live among the breeze

Another place, so far from this

Where all I have to do is wish

And upon a silver dish,

Anything that I might fancy is put before me

I wish that could be in store for me

Sadly my reality is here and now

And all my dreams run through as I wonder how

Down upon my scarred knees

Hands clasped, hear my pleas

I raised my bloody voice to heaven

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven

My prayers fall upon deaf ears

For again, no one hears

Alone inside this padded room

My head is soft, but sealed like a tomb

The outside world will never see

The raging conflict inside of me”

A True Story

“Lying there as I bled

I saw my arm, streaked blood red

Nothing can wash away this pain

I continue to indulge it, for no real gain

I think I might have a problem

I think I may hit bottom

The stones down here are cold and hard

I have played every card

Nothing works, it cannot change

And so I release the pain

Out every pore and little cut

Every puncture leaks my blood

I love the feeling

As I tear my eyes from the ceiling

Lined with tears it makes me smile

To see my efforts worth their while

The very essence from inside of me

Trickles down my arm for all to see

This time I didn’t slice my gums or chest

No this feeling is the best

This feeling is far better than the rest

That sickly little bloody stream

Is my never ending theme

I love seeing it snake its way

Down to my fingers and dance and play

And drip right onto my sheet

And spread til it’s near my feet

I kick and squirm with sick delight

Completing my ritual for the night

The icy blood my heart has cried

Is finally free, like a swelling tide

The floodgates broken, tossed to the side

Like when you took my heart for a ride

Now the water gushes forth

But this liquid has more worth

It is what keeps me stable

And so I tap my veins like honey from a maple

The precious substance gives me joy

When I see it running down me, I am no longer a boy”

Bye!

“Slit my eyelids, tumble down

Please remove this thorny crown

Trace across the battered skin

Crumpled and cut and worth so thin

Do not think of it as sin,

But as a train, uniting kin

Letting out that miserable sorrow

Never looking to tomorrow

Stuck as always, here and now

I don’t know who or why or how

I hate and love and twist and fall

I scream and cry a dying call

And it always is unheard,

Whispered silently to a bird

A messenger, angel of fate

My imminent end I do await

So my appetite for blood I sate

And I hope it is not late,

But rather early, soon I hope

Swing from the end of a knotted rope

Twisted hung and tied with care

Go ahead, kick away that chair

And just dangle there, for a while

Take in the view, for soon it fades

Goodbye to you!”

So, do you believe me when I say I’m a little wonky in the head? I’m not as fucked up and dark anymore, but I do have some pretty twisted things residing behind my usually blank complexion. They slither through the crevasses of my mind and my soul. They are oozing demons, foul and dripping with putrid black tar that squelches between the gears and cogs that keep my mental state prim, azure and running like clockwork. Sometimes the people with the least to say or who seem the most awkward are really repressing some of the saddest and most sickening things. Just food for thought. Remember that next time you see a kid who is standing by themselves at school. Maybe they just want a friend. Maybe they just want the voices to stop. Maybe they see dead people. Maybe they want to die. Maybe they just want somebody to smile at them. Maybe they don’t know how to get help. Think. Use your f*****g mind and think. Go beyond yourself, just once every day. Do that, and you might save a life. Do that, and you might change the f*****g world.

Author's Note

I would love feedback on this in general. Writing style, consistency, how linearly (or not) it moves, whether it's even a valid idea.