Brand New Day
A sense of frustration and hopelessness. Waking up to another day. “Why couldn’t I have just stayed asleep? Now I need an excuse to get out of bed, and I think I’m running out of them at this point.”
The first time I was diagnosed with depression was in 2017, when I was 17 years old. I had started to self-harm to cope with the indescribable dread of human existence in a world that never wanted me to begin with. I was put on antidepressants, and to this day, I still take that same pill every morning – along with many many others, as you might have guessed. I call them my don’t-kill-self-pills.
bed.
Depression might be the most common and universal of my illnesses, but it is also the one hardest to describe. I don’t really know how to put it into words in a way that would explain it to someone who has not been there. Because what do you mean you can’t get yourself out of bed in the morning? Just swing your legs over to the floor and stand up! It really isn’t that simple, though. Not when everything in your life has lost meaning a long time ago.
“What purpose does it serve for me to get up today when I know that no matter what I do, things will end up failing anyway, and nothing will ever get me out of this hole of self-loathing I was put in a decade ago?”
It feels like there is a heavy weighted blanket on top of you, along with all the memories and regrets of your past, pushing you down against the mattress of apathy and fatigue. It feels like everything you have ever known and loved has been taken away from you and replaced with the gnawing sensation of loneliness and isolation. You’re not able to see any of the reasons you have chosen to live through another day, thick cloud-like fog is blocking your view of the path you had once paved for yourself. All feelings have lost their meaning, and you are left with nothingness deep in your core. Your ability to observe the reality around you gets distorted, and you aren’t able to see the trash and dirt covering your floors, or the stains on your shirt you haven’t changed in two weeks. Because why would any of that matter to you, when you yourself don’t even matter anymore?
A bit over a year ago or so, I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder or MDD. My depressive symptoms had gotten significantly worse, and they were no longer suited for falling under the diagnosis of BPD alone. For me, depression takes everything away from me, my ability to even perform daily tasks, let alone enjoy any of it, even the good things. I wouldn’t know why I had to get out of bed because rational thinking just isn’t possible in the deep end. Losing my appetite, not being able to take care of personal hygiene properly, using dirty dishes to eat food out of because I just couldn’t wash them no matter how hard I tried. The overall cleanliness of my apartment suffers greatly, and I am left with no other choice than to either live with my parents or check in at the hospital.
And none of that is even touching the surface of the soul-crushing emptiness I feel inside my soul, created by the chemical imbalances in my brain and the trauma of a decade’s time. I’m an empty shell of a human being, drifting around in the current of life with no agency to myself. Everything has already and always been determined for me in advance.
That no matter what I do, how far I’ve come, I will never get to choose the life I actually want. Because it was all taken away from me before I even had the chance to say anything.
Underneath my blanket,
ichigonya
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