Getting through it… at least trying to
Despair. Noun. The complete loss or absence of hope.
It feels as bleak as it sounds, to be in a state of despair. I am not sure when I fell into this vaguely familiar place, the one in which nothing feels worthwhile. I guess it started a month or so ago, when I found myself unable to extract myself from bed. I wasn’t, and am still not, sleeping more, but my ability and will to leave the comfort and safety of my bed is decreasing. In fact, my quality of sleep has hit a low. I struggle to fall asleep, often flopping around like a fish for hours after laying my head to rest. And once my eyes finally shut, I am often haunted by nightmares or stress dreams. My sleep is never restful. Even on nights when my dreams do not scare me, I find myself waking up every 45 minutes or so. It is never for long, but the interruptions prohibit me from any sort of REM cycle.
My psychiatrist told me I do not live 24 hour day cycles, instead they are somewhere near 30 or 37. I stay awake for anywhere between 18 to 22 hours at a time, then I sleep anywhere between 12 and 15. In order to fall asleep, I must run my body to the ground, hitting the point of exhaustion where I can fall asleep standing up if I do not find myself in bed.
Another symptom of this depression is the inability to motivate myself. I have watched four out of five seasons of Breaking Bad in the past month. This does not include the countless hours of aimless scrolling on tiktok and instagram. “I’ll be done at 10:15,” I tell myself, only to find that I am off my phone at 1:30. I have fallen behind in my schoolwork, despite the fact that I usually find it engaging, inspiring even. The effort it would take to do it is much more than I have. I sit in class quietly, unable to participate given my lack of preparation.
I have been lying to myself, saying it is just a funk, it will pass. Maybe it is because I started a new job, I am adjusting to a new routine. I accredit it to my period, the constant crying cannot be more than a symptom of that. But as the days drag on, as they turn to weeks, and months even, I find myself deeper and deeper in a hole that has no ladder, no stepping stones, no escape.
I lie to my parents, for worrying them is too much to bear. I lie to my therapist and psychiatrist, for telling them will actualize the reality of my emotional state. I continue to lie to myself, for acknowledging that I am not okay hurts more than the not okay itself.
After an intense therapy session last week, in which we discussed the repercussions of growing up a competitive gymnast, I drank more than I should have to avoid the pain of dealing with the emotional weight I had just unloaded. As the night wound down, I find myself unable to keep in the tears. I laid in bed, crying the type of cry where tears do not come out, only moans of agony. I do not think I have gone a day without crying since then. Nothing has provoked it, it is only being awake that brings tears to the backs of my eyes.
I have lived with depression before, much deeper than the one I am experiencing now. But it has been years, and I have forgotten the way it creeps up on you, slowly taking up space until you are overcome by it. The past few years of mental unrest have been marked by mania, a state of elation so grand that delusion overcomes you. I am familiar with mania, with her warning signs and her symptoms. Depression I have forgotten. He feels foreign, foreboding, fearful.
I am grasping, grasping for anything to pull me up. Grasping for air, for internal peace, for freedom from my mind.
A state of despair, a place of absolute hopelessness. A place I so desperately wish to escape, yet cannot figure out how to.
I am taking action, I am trying, I will be okay. For now maybe not, but sometime soon.