What Depression Feels Like… A Unique Story to Everyone

…And this is my take, on the story of depression. Keep in mind that others experience depression differently. This is mine.

It’s back.

The blanket feeling.
The sinking emptiness.
The hollowness in my core.

It’s back and I don’t want to deal with it. I can’t stand it when I know there are people who are entitled to suffer, who have reason. Me? My reason is the sinking emptiness in my pit. It is no reason at all.

I feel guilty for being here. I feel like I am triggering others. But I don’t want to hurt anyone. I want so desperately to help others, to help myself…

Yeah, the emptiness is back. I feel it grasping outwards from the very core, the very centre of my being, reaching its tendrils out to link onto every fibre of my body and pin me down, pin me down into this nothingness, this horrible entity of nothingness. I am choking, choking in its grasp.

I want to cry. I force myself to cry. But the truth is that crying does nothing to take away my emptiness. I cannot feel anything, but the feeling of being a weight. Sinking further, further, into the abyss, like heavy rocks seeking the bottom of the ocean.

Time is immeasurable right now. I look at my phone screen after what seems to me like 5 minutes has passed, when in actuality I have been lying here encased in my blanket feeling for over an hour, shut away from my family and everyone I care about. But I can’t bring myself to see them. I can’t bring myself to talk, to anyone. I feel as though I’ve reverted back to my old ways, to the dark days where my depression was ever-present and clutched me daily, shutting me away from the world. It brings back horrible memories, where I felt completely and utterly alone in my terrible abyss of nothingness. This loneliness impends on me, like the increasing darkness of the sky outside my window. I missed the sunset tonight. Something I wanted to see. Now all colours are gone.

The truth is, I haven’t felt like this in weeks. It’s always been there, this dark empty nothingness, its tendrils tapping on my shoulder like an impatient lady’s freshly manicured nails on a desk. Waiting. Waiting for the moment I slip up, even just slightly, before it swallows me entirely. I’ve just been so busy, I have had so much relying on my functioning mind and body, that I pushed, pushed, pushed this blanket feeling away with all my strength and might. “No, I will not let this take over my body! I will not let this take over my life.”

All I can say now, however… is that I believe I fought brilliantly for those few weeks that I kept my depression monster at bay. But now it’s time for me to rest at the feet of this monster. It’s time to feel the gnawing pains that have been slowly dragging me further and further down. I must feel them, I need to feel them… because if I keep fighting it, I’m going to break. And I don’t want to break. So instead I succumb to my monster… I let the tendrils wash over me… the blanket muffle the world around me… until I rise out of it again. I know I will rise out of this again, because I always do. I just need to accept this is where I need to be at this moment… and remember, that every storm does pass.

I will feel the pain of numbness tonight. And tomorrow I will wake to the sunrise, and it will be a new day. Maybe the pain won’t go away, maybe I’ll still be muffled, maybe I’ll still have the despair clutching to my core. But I will see the sunrise, and know that I have power beyond words imaginable, because I. Will. Get. Through. This.

Yes, it’s back. But each time it comes back, I am stronger than I was when it last found me. Because I have lived through every single night it’s come back. I’m a survivor, and I’m not giving up now.

“It’s just another night,
and we’ve had many of them.”
❤ Bastille ❤