*TRIGGER WARNING*

It’s ironic how overrated depression is.

That the people who actually have it are tossed aside.

Like useless garbage.

We just want freedom.

We just want happiness.

We just want acceptance.

.

.

.

I have been unable to stop it.

The feelings just pour in

I think I’m drowning.

I’m tired of pretending

I can’t smile anymore.

The mask isn’t working

I can’t feel anymore.

Every day, I cry myself to sleep.

Dreading the pain of tomorrow.

It’s funny, how people say

“your life is perfect,

learn to appreciate”

But they’ve only skimmed

the water’s surface.

My family is unaware.

Of the pain I’m going through.

They think I’m happy

Because smiling is what I always do.

You think it’s a phase?

No, it’s not.

It’s like having poison

injected into your heart.

You helpessly wait

for the poison to spread

Until you can’t take it

And die on your own bed.

I’d rather be stabbed

and have it all end fast.

It’s better than the sadness

Slowly eating away my heart.

I’m ugly, I’m fat

I’m weird and weak

I’m useless, I’m bad

I’m sensitive and meek.

The self- hate has grown.

I don’t like myself anymore...

.

.

.

The blade speaks now.

I start cutting myself.

The feeling of hate

Expressed through every slash.

Blood trickles.

The wounds burn.

But I don’t care anymore.

After all, don’t I deserve it?

Alone, and invisible

I will live the last of my life

until the sadness envelops me

and I decide to die...

Depression is a prison where you are both the suffering prisoner and the cruel jailer.

- Dorothy Rowe

Having depression is like walking into Whole Foods to look for frosting, and you find the organic kind that spreads like chalk. The descent into oblivion tastes like vanilla, when you wanted chocolate, and have only ever tasted chocolate.

It runs like the treadmill you swore you'd spend hours on every day, the piercing summer sun breaking you into a million small fractures of despair. In the happiest situations, it is wanting to reach for the sharpest object in the room. It is endless forms, endless waiting rooms, endless time to think about what you've done wrong.

It is a slow progression of events, or perhaps a sequence of particular events. At some point, a depressed person know they have depression. For me, it took lying on a cement floor when I had a perfectly nice bed, unsure that I deserved to sleep there. I won't go into any more stories, it's pointless and sad and backwards and ultimately, nothing trumps just getting up and putting on your pants.

I have had depression for over a decade. It alienated my family, made my teenage years something of which we don't speak of. I don't have any regrets, really, and I don't feel any animosity towards the universe for this curse. I sit in cafes, writing dark poems, and simply wonder at the others: how they can save the world through their actions, and I am merely waiting for my next hospital visit.

I never developed an attitude, but I did reject God. Every day with depression is a lifetime of grey clouds, hovering and threatening total collapse. I certainly did.

I can tell anyone, everyone, that it gets better. But it doesn't. It gets harder, and then it gets better.

Perhaps one day I will find myself again surrounded by insanity in some hospital, counting my regrets on a pretend rosary. I can say I've learned something, but I haven't. Depression is stagnant, coarse like so many grains of sugar in organic frosting.

I'm going under, my head is in deep.

I sleep when I'm awake,

I'm awake when I sleep.

I eat because I have to, not for the taste.

God allows me to wake up, I am such a waste.

I notice things that are ugly, they brighten my mood.

I am asked to wear something bright, black is what I choose.

A smile is a figure in my imagination that never wants to be seen.

So I frown, I cry and everthing in between.

She's the forgotten one

the one who always gets left behind

the one living in the shadows,

praying and hoping that somebody notices her

she's hiding but not on purpose, that's just her nature

she's looking for a way out, but the only way in,

is if someone comes to her rescue

she won't feel the need to hide anymore

but she also doesn't want to be someones second choice

she's been down that road more than once

she's waiting for her knight in shining armor

and until he comes, she'll stay deep in the shadows,

alone and forgotten

Dinner is just not dinner to someone who is sad. It's the draining energy of getting out of the house. Putting on real clothing and shoes take so much time and making sure to remember your wallet and finding your debt card turns into another frenzied search. Walking to your dirty car that needs new windshield wipers and an oil change and forgetting your keys. Walking back, digging into your pockets to find your house key to unlock the front door with the fading and peeling gray paint and then tripping on the last porch step that has been loose for over a year, is ridiculous. Finally pulling out of your drive way, you notice you are low on fuel and the red arrow is past the white E, you make it to the mouth of the gas stations driveway and your cars dies. It's having to pay for a little red plastic tank to pump gas into to walk the twenty five steps to your in the way car that people are honking at. When you get to the store, a loose shopping cart quickly drifts into your door leaving a small dent and a stratch. You end up taking the cart inside and one of the wheels is bent and makes a loud squeak sound as you try to steer it straight. It's finding old welted vegtables, expired milk and coffee creamer, decaying fruit and dented cans of soup. It's seeing your hideous reflection in the doors of the frozen products but that balled up mess of sloppiness, wrinkled pet hair covered clothes, and oily slept-on hair that cannot be you. It's carrying heavy plastic bags that either split open and break or cut off blood flow to your wrist and fingers. It's the annoying drive back to the house where you are stuck at every red light and almost re-ended. It's heaving those disaposalable bags to the kitchen and dropping a can of green beens on top of your foot.

It's putting everything away and noticing you already had some or you got the wrong flavor. It's half-heartedly making an okay meal, burning your thumb on the hot pan and spilling food making stains that will need to be scrubbed off. It's having to wash the dishes and sweep up the crumbs.

you haven't seen my demons, they're far too hidden in the simplicity of things.

they're the food scraps i decide against, even when only water's burned these lips; they're those earrings i wore to prom last year when reality struck in, my only date dancing in my head; they're the whisperings at night while lying in bed (you think you didn't deserve that? you don't know that, don't you remember when you were five years old...); they're the plastic rings that slid across thin fingers in mockery; they're the lines crying against my arms beneath the sweater she tells me, is my favorite; they're the forgotten taste of memories from seven years ago you desire to go back and relive; they're the shattering silence of loneliness, when i know i'm not okay; they're the music my soul confesses to, while you are too blind and naive to listen.

you haven't seen my demons, they're not too hard to find.

The days are void of happiness

A perilous affliction

Running circles in my mind

A sickening addiction

Empty, hollow- don't describe

The fleeting thoughts that drone

Twisting, forceful, aching thoughts

Just longing to go home

My bed is no more comforting

The prison where I rot

I have become nothing now

The battle won't be fought

I like to think that better days

Will soon be nearing in

But I can't get past my mind

My soul is wearing thin

I cannot abandon life

My feelings, now confessed

Just a simple poem

from the mind of the depressed

think

just keep on thinking

your mind is a treasure,

no, my mind is the curse

the booby trap guarding the treasure.

i want to be special,

but i'm not even real.

i want to die,

but i'm not even alive.

i want to scream,

but my voice only works when they want it to.

the voices in my head

ask me what i'm doing here,

and i can't give them an answer.

i want to be special

i want so much to be special

but i'm just another speck of dust

floating in the nebula of the cosmos

i'm not special,

that's a lie they tell kindergarteners

to hide them from reality.

i'm as ordinary as they come,

and i'll live and die boring

just like my mother

and father

and grandparents

and everyone else.

because we're all boring,

a bunch of useless clumps of mold

eating away at the fruit of the universe

we are flies clustered on a dying star

sucking away at our food,

sipping our truth through a clogged straw

only bits and pieces get in.

think.

keep thinking, your thoughts mean something.

no they don't.

don't kid yourself.

eventually all we know will be gone,

our thoughts,

our inspirations,

our hopes, dreams, worlds.

what's the point in thinking

if it all goes down the drain?

what does it matter if i die now or later?

in the end,

we're all just specks of dust

in the universe.

and we'll never be anything more,

no matter how long we live or how much we do.