Is This Forever?

You’ve been here a while now, depression. I’m not sure I remember a time without you. Those memories of a different type of mind seem like something from a dream. I don’t know if they’re real. Did I ever have a mind so quiet? Or is that just how I imagine it would have been?

It feels a logical leap to ask, will depression always be there? Will it always be waiting in the wings to swoop in and cripple me with unbearable pressure on my heart and lungs? On an otherwise steady and stable day, will you walk in and take hold of will, my motivation, my raison d’être? Or will you walk into the distance one day and remain a mere memory? Fading with time, impossible to forget for the mark you have left on me, but a true piece of my past.

Or will you sit there, crawling under my skin, twisting it with your silent scream face when no-one is looking. Only to creep back into the shadows and lurk, waiting for those moments when I’m alone. Turning the inside of my head into a vast battle ground and forcing me to wear a mask over an internal struggle that I can’t explain. So that on some days the cacophony of emotions is too much, and the feeling part of my brain checks out. Leaving the rest of my mind to wade through acres of foggy grey. Numbness so thick you could cut with a knife, if only you could catch a wisp of it as it slips through your fingers.

Forever alone with a voice that drowns out all the people in the room. So adept at its deception that you don’t recognise the snake for what it is. From the subconscious contempt your mind harbours for itself, it conjures falsehoods; causing you to mistake a passing glance from a friend as disapproving, proof of your unworthiness. Stuck with a voice that paints your fears as truth. And when everything is a shade of grey, the lies your brain tells brush alongside reality, almost indistinguishable.

Questions with No Answer

Perhaps one day I’ll wake without you grasping my shoulders in your suffocating vice grip. Forcing me back under the weight of what must be done, what should be done; what I can’t do. Maybe there is an existence quieter than this one. You are simultaneously silent and deafening. An exhausting, overwhelming paradox with roots deep in my mind.

I can’t help but wonder; how would it feel to wake up without a voice telling me that I’ve already failed? That nothing I ever do can make up for all the mistakes I’ve ever made? That I should disappear? How would it feel not to second guess every single thing I say or write? How would it feel, if you were quiet for just a little while?

Another flurry of questions crosses my mind, who would I be without that voice? Would I still be me? How much of what I think of as me has been formed, shaped by this illness? What do you even do with your time, if half of your brain isn’t occupied with fighting that voice? How would a silent mind feel?

A small part of me wonders, would I miss it? Could I function without it? Could I function without the thing that makes it so hard to function in the first place? The irony of that last question is not lost on me, yet still I wonder; how would a life built around surviving, adapt to thriving?