you wake up and you feel that your life has no purpose. you realize that life is pathetically, paralyzingly short, and no matter what you do, no matter what actions you take, in the long run, they have absolutely no effect at all. you know that there are people who claim to love and need you, but that if you were to die, you would fade out of their memories like the sun in the winter sky, getting dimmer and farther away until you were nothing but a word on a page in a boring chapter in the book of their lives. you look ahead at the emptiness that is not just the day, but the next week, the next month, the next fifty years of your life. you know there is nothing you can do to change anything, nothing you can do to fill these endless days stretching out before you, nothing in your life with which to color that canvas.
some people worry about you and some have stopped worrying, knowing this is you, this is your emptiness, your cross to bear. they ask how you are and you stiffen, not wanting to say, because "depressed" has become such a stale answer. you blindly plod through your day, seeking meaning in something, in someone, looking for a hand that can pull you from the hole you're rapidly sinking into, and at the same time, you know that no one can pull you out. you can only pull them in. or make them run away.
so you isolate yourself. take your phone off the hook. put your messengers on away. turn off all the lights. try to imagine what it would be like to be dead. sometimes people try to contact you. sometimes they don't. it's better when they don't because it confirms your worst fears, that you really mean nothing to anyone, that you're just a blemish on their lives, and they would be better off without you. and that lends credence to the idea of suicide, that you're a burden to yourself and everyone whose life you touch, like the plague. so now you sit and dream, in the dark, of suicide, of how easy it could be, of how the emptiness would be erased, how the pain of feeling alone and misunderstood could leak out the wounds in your arms with your blood. you lie there and you narrate suicide notes to yourself as you cry, one line for each person who might give a shit. dear mom, i'm sorry. i love you. i just couldn't live this way anymore. i just couldn't keep being a disappointment. and you know that when you die there will be a smile on your face because this will all be over, no more nights like this.
when you finally try to sleep, it won't come, because you keep crying, thinking of the people you're pushing away, knowing you can't help it. and so you sing to yourself, something like the cure, like, "remember i was always true, remember that i always tried, remember i loved only you, remember me and smile. cause it's better to forget, than to remember me and cry." and the stupidity of it all almost makes you laugh, laugh at how pathetic you've become, how you're alone because you're intolerable to anyone you could possibly call when you're in this state. and how sad and stupid it is that you push people away because you want them to push back in, you need the validation of their affection and their attention, you need them to insist they see you, to call you until you answer, and that in spite of your protests, it's the only thing that can give your life the tiniest spark of meaning.
before you finally fall asleep, all you can pray is that you don't wake up in the morning, that you just die in your sleep, so no one will be angry with you the way they would if you offed yourself. you sleep fitfully. and in the morning, you start again.
and that's what depression feels like. that's how it eats away your mind.
