Take a Trip into my World

I am a great believer that no matter how well written a description, no matter how vivid a picture painted in your mind, you can never truly know what it’s like to be depressed without suffering from it firsthand. But when people are coming to grips with your condition for the first time this is what they want to know, they want to know how you feel. There are many descriptions of the never ending abyss, the black hole, but here I am going to try and see if I can truly make people feel what it’s like to go through what I go through every day and night.

Ladies and Gentlemen, brace yourselves for you’re about to take a ride in my world.

Imagine for a moment if you will a world where nothing makes sense to you, a world where society is like an all-encompassing Rubik’s cube. You can sit there for hours trying to solve the puzzle, twisting and turning to match the colours, but nothing fits, nothing makes sense to you. You have no idea how to solve it. How do you feel right now? Frustrated? Useless? Worthless? Whatever you’re feeling hold onto it, feel nothing but what you are feeling right now.

Now I am going to put you in an everyday scene. Imagine a street, just a normal street, it has a road adorn with cars and buses, shops decorate each side, the smell of food wafts from restaurants, the sound of music blares from a record store. Now add a crowd, not a large crowd, say around 50 people or so. A perfectly normal scene in today’s world. Most people would just fit right in.

Imagine, for a moment, that you are not like most. Imagine that the hustle and bustle of the street stings your nerves like lemon juice on an open wound. You are completely separate from them. You know with a bitter certainty that you do not belong on this busy street and you never will. You are not welcome here. The people, they tolerate you, for a time, but nevertheless, they will be glad if you leave.

Picture their scornful faces as they watch you, hawk-like, from outside your bubble. They are waiting, waiting, waiting, and when you show just the hint of weakness they will pounce. You cannot show weakness. You cannot show them a hint of what you are feeling right now. Now, head up, shoulders straight, jaw set. Does that make you feel better?

Of course not, but what can you do? Concentrate, for me, on the shame and degradation of being entirely alone in an overpopulated world. Inside, you feel loneliness gnawing at the stems of your heart like a bloodthirsty insect, you feel misery rising before your eyes like a giant black moth obscuring your vision, you feel anger withering beneath your skin like a mass of maggots breeding and multiplying until they’ve nowhere to go but out.

Now, lose yourself in these feelings. Allow your weak will to feed on the darkness you’ve created by refusing to rise above your sufferings. Indulge yourself. Revel in the pain. Lose yourself like a wild animal to your passions. For the time being all pleasant feelings are superfluous. All you need to know is fear, self-pity and anger. How much longer can you hold onto this fury before it escapes you and wrecks havoc upon your fate?

You see someone approaching – a classmate, a co-worker, a family member who, for their own reasons, holds you in contempt. You witness a sneer cross their face as they draw closer. A mocking, superior attitude. Their voice invades your mind. A taunt, a remark on your clothing – it doesn’t matter. It’s enough. Imagine the maggots exploding from you in a white rush, and you are swept away and you don’t know yourself anymore and you’re a slave to the fury, the need for revenge and there’s blood on your hands and you’re pounding, pounding, pounding the person and you’re crying and shrieking and you’ve lost control. Shrieks fill the air, hands grasp at you – you shake them off; nothing matters but the body beneath you on the pavement.

And as suddenly as it came, the anger vanishes. In its place is an icy cold, and you’re up again and you’re running and you don’t know where you’re running but it’s urgent that you get there, it’s imperative, and you leave your mind behind you at the crime scene as you flee from a part of you you never knew existed.

When you can run no further, fall to your knees and stare at the ground, gasping. Open your eyes, look at your hands. Let the tears of exhaustion and desolation wash the crusted blood and dirt from them. There is nothing for you to do but kneel there and shake, and try to remember who you are. It’s slipping through your fingers, blowing away with the cold eastern wind.

Now, how do you feel? Exhausted? Empty? Hopeless? Devoid of identity? Do you feel the tears burning your eyes? This is how I feel. This is how I feel every day. The mixture of dark emotions crushing down on me, draining what little energy I have until I am reduced to my knees, staring at my shaking hands through tear filled eyes.

Hopefully I have given you an insight into what it’s like to live with depression, even if it’s just a small glimmer. I would however just like to point out that all of this was purely metaphorical. I haven't really pounded someone to death. That's what I keep telling the police anyway :P