Into the Void

I’d been thinking about voids a lot lately.  Not a space where something is missing or gone but an endless vortex of darkness.  Having depression means circling that vortex more often than one should and fighting very hard not to get sucked in.  When you battle, you try to save yourself but you keep slipping anyway.  And you’re never far away from that vortex.  It’s always there, sometimes in the distant background where you don’t even remember why you worry about it.  Sometimes it’s right next to you, a constant reminder that you’ll never escape it.  When you lean over that vortex to peer into it’s blackness, there’s a pull.  “Fall in.  You want to.  Stop fighting.  Just fall in.”  What is it about this disease that has us fighting against the basic human instinct of survival?  

Tell Me Where is Depression Bred, in the Heart or in the Head?

I was lurking around the Twitterverse a little while back and wasting time, as is my want when work is slow and dull, when I saw a post of epically dumb proportions. Dumb tweets are nothing special: there are probably more of those than there are dust mites in our beds. However, l felt compelled to respond to this one in particular because it was a statement I had heard at several points in the past.

When It’s The Worst

It’s bad when I decide to get out of the house and head to a coffee shop (any coffee shop), but when I get there I don’t talk to anyone and spend every last second feeling like every set of eyes is on me.  It doesn’t matter how many times I tell myself there’s no way that EVERYONE is looking at me.  That it’s self-centered to think that way (I’m not that important, really I’m not).  I still can’t stop feeling awkward and unusual and lonely and scared.  I pack up my backpack (if I even go into the coffee shop to begin with) and walk to my car and realize that I barely talked to three people all day (all to do with work) and that I haven’t actually touched another human being – actual, physical touch – in a week.  The next day, I go out again to try and make some kind of contact but the result is always the same (because I am always the same). And this isn’t the worst.

Turns Out I Was Just Mostly Dead

Boy, has it been a while since I’ve been on here.  I’ve been busy finding myself (turns out I was hiding in the couch cushions the whole time (I’m so sorry for that, please forgive me)).  And maybe it wasn’t that I was busy finding myself but finding my way through and maybe just a little bit afraid of all the things I wrote before.  I even thought maybe I should just delete this and start all over with another blog but screw it.  My habit of quitting things because they aren’t perfect is something I need to break.