Tomorrow is Today

The thing that scares me the most about depression is that when you look at people who lived with it their whole long lives you see that yeah, there are highs and lows and there are mountains and fucking pits so deep  you fall right into the inner-most circle of hell. And they do fall. Even if there's therapy and coping and even if they learn how to be useful members of society, even if - on paper - they have a good life, a strong support system, they still do fall. The lucky ones only once or twice. Be it substance abuse or a sudden attempt at taking their own lives, or even just general apathy, it is hell.

It's really hard to keep going, to keep fighting to get better if the only thing I can possibly gain is to resurface, have a few okay years, maybe a couple of really good moments only to fall right back to where I am now, to where I've been before. It would be so much easier to just let go, to drift away to a safe place and never to come out again. To be numb. 

They say (I say so too) that when you experience trauma (say, rape for instance) the best way to get through it is to let your muscles relax because then it will hurt less, to let your mind escape what your body can't because only then will you be able to get up after and get help. You can't do that when you're a sobbing mess having a panic attack going fetal in a corner of a dark room. 

After experiencing something like that, after realizing that this method works not only in such dire situations but with anything unpleasant whatsoever, it's really hard to be present and deal with things in the moment, as they happen. It's so much easier to just let your mind slip back to a safe place and pretend. 

And then you fight because you still have some will to live, or maybe you just can't stand the look on your loved ones' face anymore, and you work hard and it's such a slow build but finally you breathe freely again and are just fine, really, truly fine, only to have life beat the crap out of you the next week. To be able to resist slipping, all your life, that's not humane. It's really similar to an addiction. You never truly heal.

So it's fucking hard to see why the hell I should go through all of it again and again.

Don't worry, I'm not suicidal, my therapist said so. I just have to get these things out sometimes because if I keep them in it gets too hard and you see the pattern. 

You know the saying about hell and the going. Well, I'm not sure if that going is fueled by that much alcohol it still counts as going and not just crawling, but hey, at least it sounds profound and powerful.