Inexplicable

People wonder why you are the way you are. They propose solutions to glaring problems in your life. They think you choose to be so, and wonder why. They tell you to snap outta it, to think happy thoughts, to exercise, to try yoga or maybe religion. Then, sooner or later, they give up. You're the alien they avoid. You cannot be helped.

How can you blame them? You don't even understand it. When you spend most waking moments of your day contemplating your demise, it becomes very hard to attend to worldly problems. There's a larger elephant in the room that everyone sees but deftly avoids. That's why you don't plan or contemplate much about the future. You feel invincible because you think you're future-proof. In actuality, what you have is an exit strategy.

Until the cancer leaves you, you are fundamentally incapable of any cognizant functionality. Problem is sometimes cancer lasts a lifetime, and a lifetime of it is very possibly too much for anyone. For those that tell you to snap outta it, how exactly does one snap outta cancer?

My friend the grocery store

Why am I comforted here? Not the apparel store, the restaurant or the drug store. The produce, the frozen foods, the meats, the condiments, they resonate with me. Why is that? I come here once a day without fail, sometimes twice. I never complete my shopping, so I'd have a reason to return tomorrow to get that one carton of milk or eggs, the one I had deliberately left out. I feel appeased, and soothed. Its not happiness. This feeling, almost like home, of times past, of conjured memories. Its nostalgia, clinging onto wafting, fleeting bliss of bygones.

Triggers

Some people develop depression for no reason at all. They wake up one day and they are sad. There was no trigger, nothing that caused it. Was it a bad dream? Maybe they slept on the wrong side of the bed?

Mine has a story. A start, a circumstance. It has a birth date. It was nurtured and developed, and it matured to its present state.

Which is worse? Are they any different? Do they get different endings?

Living with it

Its a commitment. You cannot outgrow it. You cannot run away from it. It will never leave you. It will be with you forever. It is you.

Accepting it as a perpetual hitchhiker helps you to accommodate its presence. Depression will be with me forever so it helps to understand it. Even if it takes my life, at least I won't waste any more energy in the meantime trying to outrun my shadow.

Numbed

The fear, the dread, the vapid constant barrage of anguish envelopes you and swallows you. Soon the delirium turns you numb, nullifies your defenses, and makes you just give up.

You don't welcome it but you expect it and recognize the inevitability. Always vulnerable. All efforts futile. You contemplate the end because you no longer have any fight left.

This is depression.

Stagnant

You'd think something would change. Maybe you have a chance, maybe there is a way. Perhaps you'd catch a break, but no. The dread remains, just as it was the first day. It didn't return, it just never left. Still as powerful, still as eviscerating. Its here to stay. To stay until you eradicate it of its host. Without a host, it would be naught. You might not have had control over its birth, but you can surely control its departure.