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?
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.
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.
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.
Lots of people tend to be self righteous without knowing it. I happen to know I have failed at meeting my own standards for being a good person. I have also failed at meeting the standards of everyone for being successful at life. Lots more will be dismayed at me in due time. Its inevitable.
I have turned into my worse enemy, my nemesis. I poison myself with a thick putrid stench of a ghost, robbing me of clarity, tripping me when it counts, haunting me with hopelessness.
I am that guy, that uncle, that friend, that son, that brother, that father, that one, the cautionary tale. The whispers flow from their lips and tell of how not to be, not to fall, not to become, like me. Not to contract that, whatever that is. Plainly a pariah.
Spending what's perhaps final moments with family is bittersweet. Everyone around you has been carefully denied the esoteric fracture that has been brewing all these years. You keep a straight face and try not to let your prep give anything away. If they suspect, they keep it to themselves, wary of salting old wounds or creating new ones. Can you blame them?
This familiarity is fleeting and will end soon. All contempt is withheld. In doing so, you realize there is love there. However, the time is coming and its constant. Without prejudice and irreversible.
Its traumatic to contemplate death, especially your own. We respond with much angst, fear and sorrow when faced with imminent death. Similarly, we mourn and express empathy fueled by these same emotions. However, trauma sufferers all have one thing in common - they are alive.
Death can be frightening to think about but its not scary to die. All there is to dying is loss of consciousness. In fact, its one of the most relaxing and least frightening things to succumb to. With death ends pain, ends trauma, ends fear, ends suffering.
Understanding the above means we should strive to never think about our own death because that only breeds fear and trauma. Instead, we should be comforted by the fact that death ends those emotions.
Before you know it, you're gone. Fact is, you won't know it.
