let me tell you what it feels like

It is exhausting, the way your brain doesn’t stop for a second. Like a Google search, it just incessantly pours over every thought and memory you’ve ever had, trying to find the key that will unlock you from all your misery. You just want so desperately to have something tangible to say when people ask you what’s wrong — knowing full well that’s a question you will never really be able to answer.

The guilt is all-consuming. You know it looks like you’re the laziest piece of shit to ever have graced this earth, the way you lay around all day — sometimes staring at the ceiling, sometimes watching 5 hours of television in a row, sometimes furiously scribbling in your journal, but certainly not doing the dishes or cleaning the bathroom or being a good partner. And you can’t open your mouth to explain that you’re just doing anything you can to get by, that there is never any rest, that what looks like laziness is actually pure internal torture, an unrelenting voice in your head that tells you over and over how worthless you are, how sad, how no one will ever love you this way, and how you deserve this grey cloud over your head.

You do your best to keep it together for the people who love you. You cry in the shower, or after they fall asleep, because the loudest thought is the one that shrieks that nobody cares, that you’re ruining everything, and that you’re one breakdown away from being left for good. You are hard enough to be around on a good day, and you know — you just know — that you are an absolute burden on the others. You think about the regret everyone around you must feel for getting involved with you at all.

It’s physical, too. Your heart feels swollen and heavy, like it is overstuffed with each little shred of pain you shove inside it in order to shield it from others. Each time someone asks if you’re okay, each time you swallow the lump in your throat and force a smile and say yes, your heart feels closer to bursting from the weight. Your limbs barely work; they go through the motions of getting you through the day as if they are on autopilot, but you’re clumsy and graceless. You try taking a long walk, riding your bike, getting through a yoga routine, but each time — less than halfway through — it’s like your body just stops working. You give up and take another nap.

It’s so lonely in your head. You sense the people around you want to help, but they might as well be cardboard cutouts. You don’t trust their words or their concerns, and you can only hear “it gets better” and “I’m here for you if you need anything” and “you’ll be okay” so many times before they just feel like more daggers impaling you. Everyone’s words start to feel just as empty as you do, so you stop telling people things. Your depression is your own cross to bear, and you know it. Maybe you even deserve it.

Days drag on, but nights feel too short. All you want to do is sleep, but once the rest of the world has succumbed to slumber and you’re finally alone, you just want that peace and silence to last forever. You can be yourself when everyone else is asleep — you can cry and write and read embarrassing self-help books and research things that might bring you out of your funk and pour your heart out on the internet as you try and seek someone, anyone, who might understand. But exhaustion pulls at you, and you start to cry as it does, knowing the whole charade begins again as soon as your alarm goes off.

Ironically, the less you lean on people, the more they begin to resent you. They become angry that you won’t share the keys to your brain and your heart, that you seem to have lost the ability to be honest at all. And you don’t bother to explain that it’s never “won’t” and always “can’t,” that you look like a grown, capable woman, but are really just a frightened child, that being vulnerable makes you feel like a deer during hunting season. That it would take ten years to bring them up to speed on all the things that have happened to make you feel like half a human.

And you wonder if seeking something or someone to blame is hopeless. You already know the laundry list of hurt you’ve been caused, because you keep it close to your chest so nobody ever sees it. And knowing has never really helped; what you need is to heal.

Healing is never linear. It is two good years, and then one of your worst. And then six months of pure joy, and three of cloudy aimlessness. And one month of suicidal ideation, and three weeks of confidence, two days of elation and then six of absolute torture. And you thought that by 27 you might be cured, or at least so familiar with these demons that you pay them no mind as they slink toward you in the night, that they’d be like a mosquito buzzing in your ear — easy to swat away and ignore. But the darkness still feels darker and scarier each time it engulfs you, and each time you wonder if this is the time you won’t come back out again.

Depression is terrifying. It is isolating, lonely, and all-consuming. It is like being locked in a cupboard, while everyone you know and love stands outside of it, speaking to you as if they can’t see the door between you. You faintly hear their “what’s wrong?”s and it frustrates you to tears at the thought of explaining that you’re trapped, because all you want is for them to just see it. How can they not see it? I’m locked in a fucking cupboard and I can’t get out and it’s like nobody even notices.

And then one morning you awake, and you aren’t in the cupboard and the darkness is gone, and it feels like your heart was swapped out entirely. You feel lighter, you can see colors again. You finally feel it when he embraces you and says “good morning,” you finally taste the coffee you’re drinking, you faintly recognize the feelings of desire and ambition and maybe even love. And by mid-afternoon you’ve remembered how to laugh, and by dinnertime he knows he has you back, and as you fall asleep you try and picture the dark hole you’ve been in, try to remember what it feels like, and you can’t. You know you’ve made it through, but you don’t know how or why, or when you’ll be back in it, but you’ve learned not to think about that.

You learn to hold the light while you have it, and make promises to yourself to kick and scream harder the next time you don’t. You say next time you won’t be scared, next time you’ll understand the impermanence of pain. You spend the good days stocking up your toolbox, writing down what makes you feel good, poking at some of your bruises and wounds so that you don’t forget that they’re still there, you stop using bandaids to fix bullet holes. At least, you try.

You try and you try and you try again. And though it doesn't seem indicative of whether or not you’ll live through it the next time, you know the hope is really all you’ve really got.