Every day I wake up and I am drowning. Each moment of happiness that I
have is so rare and fleeting that I almost don’t know what I am
feeling.

My cycle: I start something new, I succeed, I imbed myself in that
life, and then everything unravels. I fall apart. Relationships and
friendships crumble in the blink of an eye and it is always my fault.

Because a drowning person lashes out and grabs at anything to hang on
to, without worry or cause to what they are grabbing.

I have reached the point in my current cycle that I am on the edge and
I can see into the darkness. And I might not jump on my own, but I
know it would take just a tap to send me spinning forever.

And the worst part is that the vast majority of people who aren’t
drowning can’t see the ocean I am in.  Why not just get up and walk
away.

To the entire world, I am ruining my own life for the attention that
it gets me. They don’t understand that I am wearing cement shoes and
can’t get free.

How do I explain that my emotions are not mine, the tears happen of
their own accord?

How can I tell someone that they’ve become a trigger to me, where the
mere thought of facing them another day makes my entire stomach
shrink? The worst part is that he didn’t do something so completely
awful. He just made sure I knew I was insignificant.

How do I tell anyone that when I am thinking about quitting, I don’t
just mean my job?

And my easy fix- to steady myself and tread water just a little
longer, so that I can find a sandbank or a place to rest my feet-

It disgusts everyone. But it is the only way to not feel trite, to
find my center and my peace. And when the lines begin to go away, and
I can’t feel the burn of fabric rubbing and scratching my shallow
cuts, I start going stir crazy.

I remove the temptation to myself and the only thing that does is give
people an impression that I desire some weird bohemian lifestyle.

 I wish I could curl into a ball and stay forever. Shut off my phone,
computer, and never speak to a living soul again. But every morning I
get up, and pretend that I am just like everyone else.

Living with Depression is not some major triumph that I can brag over
some great milestone. It’s treading water for just another day.

I fill my life with unfinished tasks and tell myself that I can’t go
until I have completed x,y, and z. I don’t know if that is always
going to be enough, or if one day I am going to need more.

I write this out knowing that anyone who I know, who is close or not
close, will read this and think that I am selfish or just asking for
attention, or trying to excuse some awful behavior that I have
exhibited. Whether or not they are right doesn’t change the fact of
how I am feeling.

I have taught myself the difference between the feelings of Depression
and just being sad. Sometimes, when I feel sick and worried and
frustrated, and cry, I can tell myself, this is just a symptom of my
illness, and not how I actually feel. The world sees me crying, and
judges, but I can at least take comfort that I know it isn’t 100
percent real. It gives me the control that I have always yearned for.
But that control and that knowledge is not enough. I’ve been on this
ride before, and I know how the story goes.

When I was 12, the first time I “cried out” for lack of any better
term, my ______ said that the only reason that he wasn’t going to kill
me was so that he wouldn’t get in trouble.  I ruined his life.

When I was in college, I lost all of my friends my Junior year, and
spent 13 days hospitalized. I was told there that my crying out prior
was an incredibly selfish thing to do, and they were right. It was
also politely implied that I should probably not continue my education
there as I did not fit the bill for what they expected their students
to be.

I am worried about posting this, because what if now, as this third
cycle nears the end…and I don’t know if I can ever stop the ride.

What if someone reads and decides to take my welfare into their hands,
and they tell me that I’m fired.

Because it’s better to get rid of the problem before it becomes a problem.

I wish I had the guts to just run into oncoming traffic or to jump off
a building, but I am too scared. It would clean everything up and lock
it away into a nice safe box.

I don’t know that I am not jumping because I am fighting to be
healthy, or if I am only seeking attention, or if I am too scared to
pull the proverbial trigger.

I have a feeling that most people don’t dwell on these what ifs, but I
am probably mistaken.

I want to trade and be different than me, and let someone else have
these feelings so that they can do something great and creative with
them, but I can’t. Each morning I wake up and it is the same morning,
and I am drowning.

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