Well, That’s Depressing

Much like my anxiety post – I don’t really know how to explain depression. So I’m not going to! I’ve sifted through various journal entries from the past few years and I’m going to copy and paste a few things that I read back and thought, “yeah, that’s it. that’s exactly it.” because sometimes, I get my feelings spot on without trying to. Do you ever experience that? Reading back something you’ve written and being amazed that you managed to put it to words so well? Just me? I must be freaking great with words, then. This is going to be a long one, so prepare yourself.

Have you ever just wanted to listen to sad music and wallow? Have you ever wanted to do everything and go everywhere? Have you ever gone between those two ideas within a handful of minutes? I constantly want to drop out of school. How productive and attentive can I be when for the entire 2 hours of class I’m thinking about throwing it all away? I am always looking at the clock or looking at my hands. I want to be everywhere I’m not. Restless. I don’t want to stay where I am but I don’t want to try something new and end up feeling this same way.
(Side note from present Rachel: I did drop out of school and I do not regret it one bit)

Am I content or am I numb?

I can’t stop thinking about other people’s heartache. Isn’t that an album by somebody? I don’t know. I can’t stop thinking about other people being upset. I know that there is so much bad in the world. I can’t stop thinking about it. I can’t help but worry about my friends going through hard times, people I know dealing with things I’ve dealt with. I can’t stop. It doesn’t help me to carry other people’s heartache in my own heart. I’m afraid I’m going to get bad again. I guess that’s just how it is when you’ve been bad – you never let go of it. I can barely enjoy being good because I’m afraid. Afraid that it’s too good to be true. Afraid, because the bad came on so easily. I didn’t see it coming. If it does happen, I want to be prepared.

I want to feel things properly again. I was looking at my calendar and the next few months are shaping up to be quite eventful – but I don’t feel excited. This life doesn’t feel real anymore. I can see that I’ll be doing things on this day and that – but I don’t connect. Is this what being an adult is like? I can remember counting down to concerts for months and months ahead of time and now I barely even think about them until a couple days before. I want to feel excited again. I want to push to the front of crowds again, instead of standing at the back and not dancing. Why do we do this? I’ve been overeating. It’s gross. I wanna be healthy. I wanna be a better person than I am. I wanna scream lyrics at the top of my lungs and throw my arms in the air in a room full of sweaty people and not even think about it. I want an escape. I want a future. I want someone else to fix me.

I’m nothing special. I’m a mediocre person. I’m forgettable. I’m in the background. I’d accepted this in high school because I always had bigger plans. I wanted to be the person that people wish they had paid attention to. But I’m on track to amount to nothing.

I feel weird inside and I don’t like it and I want to rip the bad feelings out. I don’t feel good. I don’t feel okay. My head hurts.

Everything feels so heavy. I didn’t even want to type this because it felt like too much effort. No matter how many fun things I do, no matter how much money I spend, I still end up alone late at night, weighed down by sadness. I always feel on the verge of tears. I’m so stuck in my own head.

I was like physically unable to be a functioning human today. Everything felt horrible. It was hard to get out of bed, harder to actually do my job, to make it 8 hours didn’t even seem possible. I was immersed in this dark cloud but it wasn’t just bogging down my mind, my whole body wanted to go in slow motion; to quietly give up. Smiling was almost too strenuous. At one point I stood in a closet and spent minutes contemplating just laying down on the floor and shutting the door. Minutes of my life debating whether or not I’d be able to fall asleep there and if anybody would look for me. Yesterday I sat down at work and stared at a wall for at least 10 minutes and I didn’t think I’d ever get up. By far, if bad days are just potholes, this one would have bottomed out any vehicle. I’m gonna remember it.

It’s wanting to kick and scream but knowing you can’t because you’re not a child anymore. It’s wanting to cry but being too numb for it, so many feelings pent up that you can no longer feel anything.

I don’t want to live like this anymore. I don’t want to spend the whole week counting down until my next days off. It’s not fair to wish your life away, to want to get entire months over with so you can maybe feel better. It didn’t used to be this bad. It shouldn’t be this hard.

I never thought I was bad until I was better so how would I know if this isn’t another low?

I’ve started going to the gym and I don’t know if it’s because I want to be fitter or if it’s because I hate myself and this is my new way of dealing with that. Whatever, I’m gonna get physically stronger to make up for how fuckin weak I am on the inside. Lol?

I hate Halloween with all I’ve got. Can’t you see? All of those carved pumpkins are going to rot in a few days and you’ll toss them to the curb. Would you toss me, if you could see? I’m rotten, too.
(Present Rachel cannot BELIEVE 2013 Rachel’s incredible angst. I had to include this one just because it makes me laugh. Is that dark?)

All I wanna do is eat is fucking Nutella on toast and drink shitty Tim Hortons coffee and lay in bed all day. But I don’t actually want to do that, it is simply happening as if I have no control.

I’m tired and cold and sad I want the rain to stop so I don’t feel like I’m drowning anymore. Funny how the bad days can make you forget about all the good days. Funny how bad days can make every song sound like a sad song.

I feel like I’m drowning out here. I can’t breathe and I need a familiar voice to tell me about the stupid mundane things going on in their life so I can pull my hands away from my neck.

Everything feels heavy again. I don’t know if I have the strength to get out of bed. I’m exhausted. I’ve been contemplating putting my life on pause and going back to my dad’s house, where I can just be alive for free. I want to give up.

Walking around and smiling like it doesn’t feel like my head could fall off at any moment. Like I don’t feel as though my life is being lived on the edge of a cliff over deep water. Like I’m living at all. Everything feels like it’s falling apart and I really don’t know what to do. I’m walking in a haze of “what am I doing? What’s the point? Where am I going? Who am I?” and I can’t see straight. WHERE AM I GOING???

OK that’s enough, I think you all get it. I can’t bare to look through any more journal entries, the further back I go, the less I can relate and the more I’m just sitting here reliving just how awful I used to feel circa 2011 up until dropping out of college. Honestly, since then, it’s been a lot easier for me to be a human. Of course, I have bad days (and weeks…) but at least now I don’t compare myself to rotting pumpkins or haunted houses (an entry that I did not include because it was VERY long and VERY dramatic but hey, I’m sure at the time that was exactly how I felt).

If we all put on our Therapist Goggles we’d see a few themes present but I think its more a general feeling of hopelessness for me. Over the years the hopelessness manifested in different ways, but it always came down to not seeing a point in things. Not seeing a future for myself – which is inconvenient considering that I’ve felt this way for years and while other people were making plans, I was struggling to see the next few minutes sometimes. Because of this, I live a lot of my live through whims and spontaneity, which can be great but I don’t think it’s sustainable to live your entire life that way. Eventually, I’m going to have to sit down and think about long-term goals. Even if “long-term” means a year from now, or a few months from now.

The Front Bottoms have a song called Peach and it includes the lyric, “it’s just so hard to see tomorrow past tonight” and that sums it up for me. Depression is the inability to see the good through the bad. Sometimes it really is not being able to grasp that a bad night will end, and there will be a tomorrow.

I went back and forth between if I should include a happy song or a sad song at the end of this, and I think we all deserve a happy one after reading through that emo shit. Here’s one of my favourites:

Xo, Rachel