The Road To Hell

I haven’t posted anything for a long time on this blog because, honestly, I just haven’t felt capable. These days I’m using every ounce of my energy to keep me coming into the office every day. I started this blog as somewhere for me to vent and to rant on about the way I’m feeling and my attempted recovery from depression and anxiety. More than anything I wanted it to be a positive place, where I could try to turn the negativity I feel every day into something positive. Look on the bright side kind of thing. I now realise that wasn't realistic.

For me, having depression is like being on the outside of your life looking in. It’s like I'm wearing cloudy glasses. Everything is shrouded in fog, familiar and yet so very unfamiliar. Imagine a glass box. The glass the box is dirty, you can barely see through it but inside, you can see a person. You instantly recognise that person as you, but something’s decidedly off. In the dirty glass box, the person is surrounded by spiders, which you know you're terrified of. You can tell the person in the box is scared but is completely helpless. On one side of the box there’s a door. You can’t open it from the outside but you can see a door handle that the person on the inside could use to open the door. There are spiders everywhere and you genuinely start to fear for the person in the box, knowing how upsetting this must be. You scream through the glass, telling them to get out, there’s a door right in front of you, use the handle, come on you can do it its easy. They just stand there, blankly staring at you, slowly getting more and more covered in spiders. You're horrified. Screaming you point at the door handle. They look at it and look at you. "Open it" you scream, leave, get out of that place, just step out the door. They don't though. They just look from you to the door handle. They can't open the door. They can’t explain why they can’t open the door, they understand what to do but they just can’t do it even though they're somewhere horrible they don't want to be. No rhyme or reason to it, they just stay trapped in that dirty glass box, completely unable to make a move, apathetic to the fact that they're covered in spiders. Trapped and miserable. This is what its like for me every day. Looking at that familiar unrecognisable person, screaming at her to do what needs to be done, to live normally, to be happy and she just doesn’t respond.

At the weekend I realised that I put a lot of the reasons why I’m depressed down to my job. I mean honestly I'd literally rather get fingered by Edward Scissorhands than come in here every day. The problem is, where a couple of months ago I was miserable at work and, for the most part, able to shut off this misery in my outside life, I can't really tell the difference anymore. Misery about my job has spilled over into misery about my life. What I have been blaming on my job I don't think I can really do anymore. I mean sure, having a job that makes you want to crash your car on the way in isn’t great. That isn’t going to do anything good for anyone’s mental health. The truth is though, it’s not just the job. I am so unhappy with virtually every aspect of my life.

At the moment, I want to hide away. I keep thinking how this would be so much easier if I didn’t have to put up with other people. If I didn’t have to explain myself or even just talk to anyone else for a day that would be great. I can't put my finger on why, it’s everything, I am just utterly miserable. I don’t want to do anything, don’t want to get up, don’t want to go out, don’t want to wash myself, don’t want to speak, don’t want to tidy up, don’t want to deal with other people, don’t want to take the dog out, don’t want to do anything.

I'm aware enough of my own situation to know that in order to try to be happy, it would require major life changes and upheaval, something which I'm just incapable of doing right now. Much like the person in the glass box, I can tell you what I have to do but I just can’t do it. For no reason other than I just cant. I keep making these stupid promises to myself, I'm going to make myself be happy, I’m going to stick up for myself, I'm going to see the positive but its all bullshit really because fact of the matter is, I just cant do it right now.

I've almost got used to wishing I was dead every day. It’s like an almost throw away thought now. Let me re-iterate this, I DO NOT WANT TO KILL MYSELF....but if I could just become dead somehow that wouldn’t be the worst thing ever. From what I've heard this is a fairly common thought for those in the depths of depression. It doesn’t worry me when maybe it should. That's how used to it I am. I don't know what the answer is.

I'm not going to make any more promises to myself. I'm not going to try to force everything to have a positive spin because sometimes, things really are just that shit. Maybe instead of fighting my negativity I should embrace it. Sounds counter-productive but honestly, trying to stay positive is having almost the opposite effect. I feel like I’m spinning out of control, like I could just loose it at any second. Maybe I should hold on to that because at least it’s a feeling. I can rapidly feel the long arms of apathy starting to tighten their grip around me and I so desperately want to avoid that again.

I don’t know. Ramble ramble ramble. I need to be realistic. I'm struggling right now. I need to take every day I wake up and get up as a victory instead of being disappointed to have to go through another day. Sounds so ungrateful. There’s that nasty depression guilt rearing its ugly head. I always say things and don't follow through. That glass box is getting dirtier and I don't know how to help myself out of it. Who knows, maybe there will be a zombie apocalypse and none of this will matter anyway. We can hope right?

TGWG x