Tangled

I'd always heard that she looked like smudged mascara and scarred wrists.

I'd always heard that she looked like isolation and loneliness.

And it seems that sometimes that is what Depression looks like…but not always.

When Depression reared her head, everything changed.

She bought with her, Anxiety.

A malicious, vicious being.

The kind to question my every action, thought and feeling and barricade me within my own mind.

She was the shadows weighing down my shoulders, whispering harsh half-truths in my ears.

She reached inside me and twisted my insides, tangling me into one unpickable knot.

She took her sharpened scissors and cut every connection I'd ever owned,

rendering me disconnected and alone.

Depression brought with her Shame, creeping in ever so slowly.

She ridiculed me for feeling like a deep stormy black when really, all I should have been was blue.

She electrified me, wounded me…left my senses raw and bleeding.

She made every moment, every interaction, feel like an assault on my being.

Depression's gang dragged me to my bed and held me captive.

Riddled me with nightmares - riddled me with dreams.

I dreamed and dreamed of better things.

Better times.

Better places.

Better people.

Of escaping these tormentors and fighting my way to freedom.

The dreams felt like they could be my new reality.

The dreams embraced me, cradled me, shielded me, whisked me away -

Away from the intruders in my mind.

The loneliness ebbed, and Anxiety that had kept me riddled with knots unravelled, one loop at a time,

Until finally, I could stretch my arms wide and breathe easy,

No longer restrained by Depression, Anxiety and Shame.

But when They left, there was uncertainty.

After spending so long in Depression's grasp, life without her didn't make sense.

. . .

When Depression came back, it was like greeting an old friend with open arms.

Anxiety and Shame wrap around me, settling into the holes they left behind,

and I spring back into the same tangled mess of knots I have always been.