Depression – Shapeshifter, Thief, Manipulator
Dear Depression,
Society calls you the black dog. I personally think black dogs are too cute to be associated with you, depression. You affect millions of people worldwide with your sorrow, your emptiness, and your hopelessness.
Depression, you’re a shapeshifter – taking the curvature of all things beautiful and turning them into straight lines and sharp edges. Those edges pierce my heart a thousand times over, before I’ve even made it out of bed.
You’re a mass manipulator – you take the sunshine and hide it behind storm clouds that rain all day, saturating the skies with a darkness that lingers much longer than the clouds do.
You’re a thief, you took away everything whole and left me with something much less – emptiness.
The above is my way of characterising you poetically, because words are the only thing you’ve not stolen from me yet, though my ability to have confidence in what I write was taken many years ago. Words are the only thing that I can use to dull the way I feel inside, because you have stripped me of what it’s like to feel ‘normal.’ Truth is, this is my normal now. You, following me around every day is my normal – even though you’re not something I have grown accustomed to.
I’ve tried every potion my doctor has scribed on a green slip to rid me of you. It never truly works. I just end up feeling numb, or have to endure a combination of the side-effects I swore to myself I wouldn’t read prior to swallowing the tablet. I tried the ‘talking therapies,’ but again, you lingered, stuck at my side, telling me it would never work, that I should just give up. That I am worthless and shouldn’t be wasting the therapists time.
When my world is quiet, you are at your loudest. You scream at me – baring your devilish grin – telling me I’m a failure and that I should just end it all. You give me the help I need to agonise over whether I can take my own life, end it all. You sit with me for hours on end telling me which method I should choose. It bleeds into every moment, and every time I do something stupid, like dropping something for instance, you tell me that I’m useless and should end it. You tell me everyone would be better off without me. I sit in the darkness of you, evil depression; sometimes feeling everything so strongly, sometimes feeling absolutely nothing. I get to the point where the nothingness is so loud that I decide that you’re right, I’m done with it all. I need the void to swallow me up and extinguish your flame. It is only then that I can’t, I tell myself the children and my family deserve better, that I deserve better, and that’s when you step in and call me a coward. You are evil personified, depression.
Not only do you dwell within my core, stripping me of my spark, but you stole my mother from me before I could grow old enough to remember her without you by her side. I never knew my mum without you. You took her away from us all; and now all of these years later, you’ve still got your hands around her throat. You made me feel responsible for her, made me the mother to my mother, you made me scared for her, scared for us all. The drugs made her a zombie, she couldn’t cry, she couldn’t function, she was lost within the mazes of her mind and she’s still never found her way out of there since.
Fuck you, depression. You’re nothing but a desperate fool. One day soon society will begin to take your threats seriously. Stigma will end, and we will fight you together, as compassionate beings. It’s then that your reign will truly end.
Not yours,
Me.
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Depression – Shapeshifter, Thief, Manipulator
Dear Depression,
Society calls you the black dog. I personally think black dogs are too cute to be associated with you, depression. You affect millions of people worldwide with your sorrow, your emptiness, and your hopelessness.
Depression, you’re a shapeshifter – taking the curvature of all things beautiful and turning them into straight lines and sharp edges. Those edges pierce my heart a thousand times over, before I’ve even made it out of bed.
You’re a mass manipulator – you take the sunshine and hide it behind storm clouds that rain all day, saturating the skies with a darkness that lingers much longer than the clouds do.
You’re a thief, you took away everything whole and left me with something much less – emptiness.
The above is my way of characterising you poetically, because words are the only thing you’ve not stolen from me yet, though my ability to have confidence in what I write was taken many years ago. Words are the only thing that I can use to dull the way I feel inside, because you have stripped me of what it’s like to feel ‘normal.’ Truth is, this is my normal now. You, following me around every day is my normal – even though you’re not something I have grown accustomed to.
I’ve tried every potion my doctor has scribed on a green slip to rid me of you. It never truly works. I just end up feeling numb, or have to endure a combination of the side-effects I swore to myself I wouldn’t read prior to swallowing the tablet. I tried the ‘talking therapies,’ but again, you lingered, stuck at my side, telling me it would never work, that I should just give up. That I am worthless and shouldn’t be wasting the therapists time.
When my world is quiet, you are at your loudest. You scream at me – baring your devilish grin – telling me I’m a failure and that I should just end it all. You give me the help I need to agonise over whether I can take my own life, end it all. You sit with me for hours on end telling me which method I should choose. It bleeds into every moment, and every time I do something stupid, like dropping something for instance, you tell me that I’m useless and should end it. You tell me everyone would be better off without me. I sit in the darkness of you, evil depression; sometimes feeling everything so strongly, sometimes feeling absolutely nothing. I get to the point where the nothingness is so loud that I decide that you’re right, I’m done with it all. I need the void to swallow me up and extinguish your flame. It is only then that I can’t, I tell myself the children and my family deserve better, that I deserve better, and that’s when you step in and call me a coward. You are evil personified, depression.
Not only do you dwell within my core, stripping me of my spark, but you stole my mother from me before I could grow old enough to remember her without you by her side. I never knew my mum without you. You took her away from us all; and now all of these years later, you’ve still got your hands around her throat. You made me feel responsible for her, made me the mother to my mother, you made me scared for her, scared for us all. The drugs made her a zombie, she couldn’t cry, she couldn’t function, she was lost within the mazes of her mind and she’s still never found her way out of there since.
Fuck you, depression. You’re nothing but a desperate fool. One day soon society will begin to take your threats seriously. Stigma will end, and we will fight you together, as compassionate beings. It’s then that your reign will truly end.
Not yours,
Me.
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