Emotional Fog

Depression continues … about 3 weeks or so now. I can’t seem to pull myself out of it. I thought I was on the upward swing yesterday, but today tears are just under the surface ready to pour at any emotional thought. Though, I feel nothing. It seems strange to feel so heavy, full of darkness, grey concrete-like. Nothing can get in. The soft tender feelings erupt into deep sadness. I feel hopeless, numb to life, yet touched so deeply by it. What evil is this sucking away my hope, comfort, and joy. Painful, painful feelings beginning with thoughts, they say. Negative cognitions fly through my head without my even noticing. Like shadows, soft and quiet, gently pulling me down a slow steady slide. So smooth I don’t notice my balance is off. Now it’s beyond my ability to stop the downward spiral. Words are not detected, just blurs across my mind like fog. If I could understand the words, perhaps I could change them, stop them. But, they’re so whisper soft, not words anymore, just feelings … deeply sad feelings … beyond sad, full of pain. My heart hurts. Is it worry? I fear something ominous?

I follow the path of my mother and my mother’s mother. I may veer to the left or right at times, but never lose sight of the prints of those before me. How I fooled myself to think I was immune to their blindness to joy and the precious gift of life. Now I see myself embracing the small droplet of emptiness, pulling all of life into a narrow opening that filters in only the painful and sad. Death seems a solution, but how so? Choose the unknown over the known? That doesn’t fit the nature of humans … the biological desire to stay the same … to be comfortable in the status quo, no matter how painful. Why then is suicide a choice? To reach beyond the known comfort zone into the far reaches of the unknown is against nature. No, I don’t want to die. I want the pain to stop. I want to stop existing for just a little while. Trying and hope have soured in my soul. I have reached my maximum capacity for responsibility, rejection, disappointment, failure. I can’t do it. I can’t be it. I am weak. I am wrong. My shoulders tell how heavy this burden is to bear, slumped with my neck stuck out like a buzzard searching for the smell of decaying hope. My body hurts when I pull myself straight. The strain of bending under the impossible load makes my muscles scream, but I don’t hear until I glimpse my crooked reflection in the window or mirror and pull myself back into human upright alignment.

What is depression? The anguish of the world speaking through my mind, quietly, gently taking me away, like Hitler, unknown except to my spirit, and I feel it stop fighting, stop moving, stop breathing. Is it dead or just crushed under the weight of all the responsibility and failures, ready to gasp for air as soon as I lift the burden from my back? How do I move? Where does the energy come from, for I feel none at all? What will lift me up from the floor where I have been lying and staring at the ceiling for what seems to be days, but I’m sure only hours?

Tomorrow … I have a 2:30 appointment with my doctor to talk about medications. Bring me up slowly, lift this heavy load and breathe some life into my body. Push my brain to be sane, and when the force of pharmaceuticals pulls me up far enough so I can touch the floor, I’ll take over. I’ll start a healthy diet, lay off the Dr. Pepper, exercise and take long hot baths to soak away the stresses of the day. I’ll stop working before dinner and watch TV and pet my dog and stroke my cat and appreciate the day. I’ll go to work and feel proud of the job I did, and I won’t let the vicious words of others define who I am any more. Tomorrow … perhaps I’ll have hope again.