World weary.
I've tried to explain depression. Not in general but specifically as it relates to me. It's not easy. In particular because I don't know what it is to other people. Again that barrier, that unknown, that x-factor that is the other mind, lumbers there blocking the view and making a map useless. (Who needs a map when there's a big meteor blocking the road? What good's it do?)
To me, it's weariness. Fatigue. An all-over feeling of having-had-enough. My hair feels made of wet seaweed, twined and tangled with lead chains and barnacled anchors, so that my head is over-encumbered and my neck fragile and bent. My arms ache towards the top as if I've been carrying frozen-solid refrigerators packed with elephants and rhinos and small planets. My eyes feel as if they've been shedding tears for months, filling teacups and mixing bowls and empty terra cotta plant pots, even when I haven't had the energy or the motivation to cry. My chest feels like a rock slide in progress, an eternal sliding into something bottomless and sideless and topless, as if, looking down my gullet, one might see an exact replica of the blackest edges of the universe, racing outward into more blackness.
I just feel beaten.
There have been times when it was particularly scary and slippery, and I felt like a cat trying to keep from sliding into a swimming pool on a rainy day. I could feel my imaginary claws scrambling for something to jag. I ran through lists in my mind of people who I could call. Lists. I would tick off names and make an excuse for each person. Why I shouldn't bother him. Why she doesn't need the hassle. And I would lie on my stomach on the floor or on the bed or on the sofa and sink.
I've been organizing lately. Ordering Fain's Dr. Seuss books and Curious George. Filing and deleting emails. Clicking through folders and documents, determining the relative value of each, disposing. Alphabetizing. Numbering. And that always scares me a little. I recognize it now as an attempt to quell chaos. And chaos is the state of my skull when depression starts to seep into it. Depression is algebra. Too many numbers and symbols that start to swirl and become senseless. Depression is balancing a checkbook without a calculator, knowing that you've overspent and that there is no income to cover the overdraft.
To me, it's weariness. Fatigue. An all-over feeling of having-had-enough. My hair feels made of wet seaweed, twined and tangled with lead chains and barnacled anchors, so that my head is over-encumbered and my neck fragile and bent. My arms ache towards the top as if I've been carrying frozen-solid refrigerators packed with elephants and rhinos and small planets. My eyes feel as if they've been shedding tears for months, filling teacups and mixing bowls and empty terra cotta plant pots, even when I haven't had the energy or the motivation to cry. My chest feels like a rock slide in progress, an eternal sliding into something bottomless and sideless and topless, as if, looking down my gullet, one might see an exact replica of the blackest edges of the universe, racing outward into more blackness.
I just feel beaten.
There have been times when it was particularly scary and slippery, and I felt like a cat trying to keep from sliding into a swimming pool on a rainy day. I could feel my imaginary claws scrambling for something to jag. I ran through lists in my mind of people who I could call. Lists. I would tick off names and make an excuse for each person. Why I shouldn't bother him. Why she doesn't need the hassle. And I would lie on my stomach on the floor or on the bed or on the sofa and sink.
I've been organizing lately. Ordering Fain's Dr. Seuss books and Curious George. Filing and deleting emails. Clicking through folders and documents, determining the relative value of each, disposing. Alphabetizing. Numbering. And that always scares me a little. I recognize it now as an attempt to quell chaos. And chaos is the state of my skull when depression starts to seep into it. Depression is algebra. Too many numbers and symbols that start to swirl and become senseless. Depression is balancing a checkbook without a calculator, knowing that you've overspent and that there is no income to cover the overdraft.
posted by Autumn at 8:29 PM
2 Comments:
You do a much better job of describing it than Wurtzel, Babe. All day I have been trying to force my ass out into the open air to work up a sweat but ultimately my bed won out. Trying to push back those thoughts is alleviated by sleep. I miss you - we must talk soon - sh
So glad to hear from you! I was thinking of you just a minute ago, wondering where you are and what you're doing. I'll call you tomorrow afternoon while Fain's asleep.
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