Due to some changes in my life as well as an ongoing fight with clinical depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, I’ve taken a back-seat to public writing. This needs to change. I withdrew deep into myself for days, weeks, months at a time. The dark pit seemed only to grow longer and darker and more inescapable.
The posts made here about my personal life and the struggles I’ve endured were only the tip of the iceberg as what can only be described as a heavy weight began pressing down on me. It grew difficult to climb out of bed in the morning, and even now when I’ve made vast leaps of improvement towards regaining both my confidence and my sanity the task is still arduous.
Of course, the only way to begin climbing out of this dark pit is to reach up. There are those who can offer lifelines to me, but unless I actually reach out and take them I will only sink deeper into darkness. Depression is a nasty little monster though. It isn’t enough that it has one claw on your ankle, while it sits with its bloated body on top your chest. No, it is also whispering in your ear, tickling your thoughts with its venomous tongue. This demon is insidious and can often sound like your own voice calling out words of wisdom to you.
“It’s useless. Give up now. You are a worthless, pathetic loser. You will never be or do anything. Just sleep. Sleep is easier. Never wake up. It’s simply too much to face the pain.”
The endless cycle of thoughts continue. There are days full of shrieking, unbearable pain, but even worse are the days of hopeless silence. You simply lie there, staring at the ceiling while your soul is writhing in agony. You can’t even bring yourself to cry because of how terribly drained you are.
For a writer, this is crippling. Many would like to romanticize depression, but really they are putting flowery words on what is mere sadness. Sadness is a feeling, it is pain though fleeting and temporary. Depression is a place. It is the aforementioned dark hole that pulls you further into it.
You can write about sadness. Sadness can be dramatic, entertaining. Sadness can lead to great stories. Sadness can have meaning. Depression is none of these. It is dull, monotonous, and can be entirely meaningless.
Struggling to overcome my own depression has been an uphill battle, but I believe that I can beat this demon into submission so long as I keep doing that: looking up. If I put a goal before myself, there is nothing I cannot conquer. One of those goals is to dust off this blog, to make it active again. I’ll be looking for work again. Submitting stories and articles again.
My longest dream has been to fill the world with my words, of which there are still many. I am done with this self-destructive spiral of pain and horror. The pain will linger still, but I can learn to live with it. Just so long as I do not forget to live.
