The reality of my depression, my Parasite, is that it has taken the form of something I lost a long time ago, still my greatest weakness, and uses it against me. Here I am, all of these years later, in a completely different life, and still, STILL I'm infected. Just fucking YESTERDAY I woke up panting and sweating because I'm still having these fucking dreams.
I always assumed that when the Parasite finally overtook me, I'd be alone, poor, emaciated, jobless, twitching and addicted to God-knows-what, huddled in the corner of a dark room and failing to cling to the last filaments of my psyche. Who knows, that could end up being the case. But as it stands, I'm 25 years old. Married. I have a kid. I have a decent apartment. I have a job. Money enough to keep the bills at bay, and a few friends and family members still showing up for roll call. People are shocked when I tell them that sometimes, those things aren't enough to get me out of bed in the morning. To convince me to stick around. Sometimes they tell me how things could be so much worse.
And they could, no doubt. But that's part of the problem. Until things are bad enough that they call the men in white coats, they will always be *this* bad. I'm still functioning as an adult. I'm still eating. Still making it to work most days. If it got to the point where I couldn't be trusted behind the wheel of a car, if I stopped eating or just gave up on my job or my family, then there'd be action. Somebody would be able to step in and remove me from the equation because I need serious help. But why is there no in between? I need help NOW, and I feel like I've been asking for it for years and nobody gives a shit. And it's not like I know what I'm asking FOR, just that something needs to happen and I have never known how to catalyze it. And I'm so fucking tired. Exhausted, all the time. I feel a hundred years older than I am.
My son toddled into the room a minute ago. He looked at me and gave me a huge smile which broke my heart. I smiled back, but the tears started. His face fell, hard. He walked over to me and held his arms out so I would pick him up. I pulled him into my lap and he hugged me, trying to make it better. But it's depression. It's an episode. He pulled back to look at me, and I've never seen such complex emotion in his face before. Disappointment that I was still sad. Frustration that he didn't know what to do to help. Confusion as to whether he did something wrong. He just looked at me, with mini versions of my own eyes, searching for an answer he will never get. I don't have one. I was watching this child, not even two years old yet, try to work out why daddy was sad, and the fact that he couldn't was upsetting him.
Do you think that will stop? Do you think he'll ever have an answer as to how to fix daddy? Of course not. Do you think my beautiful wife, who has to put up with my bullshit every single day, will ever be happier than she is now? Day after day of trying to be strong for me and strong against me, and you think that will get easier for her over time? No. They're doing studies on depression and finding out that it may actually be contagious. It's pretty fucking obvious to me. My parents and siblings seemed much happier soon after I moved out. Even just the general mood of the house is so much better, you can fucking smell it. And then on the other hand, My wife gets more frustrated with every one of my episodes, and this little boy who is known for being happy all the goddamn time is wrestling with his dad's depression already.
So the blog is going away. I need help that I can't get from it, or from anywhere, really. I can't even impart to you how hard it is to write this shit, either, you know? I know what it looks like, I know how it reads. It's all just the emo psychobabble of a Tumblr asshole who never grew up and is passive-aggressively vomiting half-prose on a blog to see if someone will take notice. It's pretty telling that comments on some of my most personal posts were fucking jokes. I always feel like I know what I want to say when I sit down, but all I ever do is talk in circles, never arriving at my point, and struggling to remain vague because I'm battling between telling the truth and protecting the identities of certain entities so I can't be confronted by them. I can't find out how to make you care about this. I'm starting to feel like that in all areas of my life. You would not believe how many times I'm trying to say something and I get interrupted by the person I'm talking to, as they completely change the subject and never EVER want to continue talking where we left off.
God. You used to LISTEN, you know that? You actually fucking looked at me, and wanted to know what I was thinking. You acted like you wanted nothing more in the world than to get inside me and figure me out. Nobody is like that anymore.
You did lie to me. It's what keeps coming back, no matter what I try and drown it with. That I'll never know. It will never be finished. The ghosts will follow me forever, they will be my escorts, no matter how long it takes.
He, on the other hand, does not love you. You feed off each other’s pain and frustration; he will only confuse you more. I know his eyes are intoxicating and he seems to understand you, even if he does not try to help you. Forget him, you hate yourself when you are with him, and his life is empty.
I don't even remember how I found that. I shouldn't have, I know. But the truth is that you're impossible to avoid. It's maddening. So what am I supposed to think of that? Because at the same fucking time, there's this:
i never lied to you. you are beautiful. be that man.
So which is it? Why do I even give a shit? Why do I give a shit about any of this? I want to be done. I have wanted to be done for a long fucking time. I don't have anything left, I don't feel a future anymore. My humor is gone, my optimism, my health, my interests, my motivation, and I can't get them back. I cannot fucking stand it anymore. I can't stand all these people with their small lives and their small problems, small goals, small interests. I want the world and everything beyond it. You only wanted the beyond. I loved THAT. You were always a reminder that there was something else out there. THAT'S what I want back. The reminder. Not you. You'd fucking hate me now anyway. I don't say that just to be self-deprecating, I really mean it. Again, why does it even matter.
There's a motorcycle from the 1950's sitting in the boathouse at Bear Lake, just gathering dust for decades upon decades. It doesn't work, probably never will again. Even if it could be fixed, with new parts and oil and polish and air in the tires, the effort would never be worth it. It will sit until it's finally taken to the dump, making room for something else.
No comments:
Post a Comment