Emergence

There’s this building on my way home from work. It’s not special. I can’t even tell you where exactly it is. But on the days that I leave early enough to walk into the sunset, the lights on in the building may as well be reflections off the reflections from across the street off the Hudson from the sun. And the way that it stands, tall and tapered, makes me think of taking a knife and running it up along the side peering down at the street the way you would scale a fish. And one by one the windows would fall to the street and shatter into knives of their own into the people walking below and the lights inside the units would snuff. I climb up and peak inside at the people who are living and whisper the questions that will pull their ghosts out by the wrist, who are they in the darkness? Who are they without their faces and busy lives, their menial tasks and lingering pasts? I tear their bodies into pieces, burn their letters, toss their jewels, and when they, at last, realize they are nothing, I realize they are just like me.

Man oh man did I lose it today. My body runneth over with the surplus of sickly sleep I gathered in the last few days. I am too awake. And for too long. The shows and videos and music that would distract my mind are themselves numbed out. I’ve started stress Sudoku-ing again, but even that doesn’t last long enough. So in the silence, in my fears, in my bed, I let my mind run with the darkness, rearranging the hierarchy on my list of most preferable ways to go, revising the conditions in which I can execute that list, and drowning itself in everything that it thinks is wrong. Even though nothing is wrong. My broken mind cannot comprehend future. Cannot comprehend progress. I am trusting the advice of friends, of therapists, of old me’s, but faith is a hard thing to follow when you have a brain that cannot process hope. It was today that I realized there will never be a cure. I can make Him dormant for as long as I can, but He’ll always be here beside this version of me that wishes for a terminal disease, a fatal accident, a guiltless death. Hopeless as it is, in many ways it seems a much more feasible task than excising entirely.

It’s always interesting looking back at the things I choose to write about. Because I don’t usually write while I think, and everything here is either what comes to words easily or what I deem important enough to remember. Is any of this actually important? I don’t necessarily want to remember these awful thoughts because with the hour or two that’s passed since the last paragraph, I am now in a completely different state of mind. And I don’t think that way anymore. And I don’t care for those silly death is a luxury constructs I used to hold so dear. That’s what I remember learning about rain back when I was infatuated. That things to do with psychology are so hard to understand because you really can’t until you’ve actually experienced it. And even if you have, it’s not at all the same as being in it. All I know is that out of curiosity and a sudden absence of passivity, I found the depression subreddit and began reading so many of the posts in a community of nearly a million. And some of them had awful lives that put mine in perspective. Many were more desperate than me, a few were truly suicidal, and all were looking for someone to see them, hear them, tell them that they are important, their words were read, that because they simply existed somehow something has changed. And if things could change, then things could change. I think what made the difference for me tonight was the relatability, the resonance, the recognition that this is not what is normal, and yet is far more normal than you’d think.

It’s rare that I name depression in my writing. It’s always a Him, personified, abstracted. I don’t think I’ve ever been officially diagnosed. It’s not a great sign that I didn’t need to be. But in seeing my thoughts in the pens of so many others’ hands, I no longer feel alone. Instead I feel a pity and a sadness that is not the depression kind of sadness but the sadness I’m sure the people around me have felt when I’ve gone to them and laid myself out time and time again. And then suddenly, I realize that I’m breathing air. And that there are things that I should do. And it’s not so hard to walk around. The others don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve that. Because in the end we do it to ourselves. Not willingly, not consciously but we do. Depression is the song you get stuck in your head but don’t know the name of for weeks on end. It’s a philosophy, tripped and fallen into, perpetuated by chemical imbalances that close in on you in a negative feedback loop of isolation and despair until it is a lifestyle. They do not actually want to die. They just want to remember what it’s like to live. I’ve been looking up ways to volunteer. I don’t know if that’s something I’m manage to follow through on, but I hope I do. I think it’ll help me too.

My sleep schedule is a little screwed up now. But it was worth it. I thought my way out of hole I’ve been in. It’s the first time I’ve ever been able to point to a moment and know that I’ve won. Even if it is just for now. But I don’t think it will be. The silence is not so scary now. In fact it’s kind of peaceful. If I don’t end up sleeping super early tonight I might find something else to write about. Some sick fact or crazy news or writing critique. Maybe I’ll latch on to some drama or book or fashion trend. You know, all the things people are supposed to be thinking about instead.