Sticky

Depression is a black disease without a cure. Like addiction, you are either on the wagon or off it, like cancer you are either riddled with it or in remission just waiting for the next bout. You survive depression but you never completely recover. This is no cure; they are simply moments of grey amongst the black. Chronic sufferers of depression strive for the grey, hope for the white but understand that the grey is often the best they can ever hope for. However a lot can be achieved in the grey when the alternative is blinding black. Someone that has never suffered from Depression will find this concept difficult to grasp, they may even believe they have had moments of depression but generally they just had a few bad days or even months. Depression is not an emotion or even a state of mind as it is something more consuming than that. A person with depression doesn't have successful relationships, they struggle to succeed in their career, they move through friendship groups between episodes. They disappoint friends until they disappear, they often stop communicating, contributing, and rarely confide in others. They become secretive, sullen and dangerously submissive. First the anger appears like a bush fire clearing the way, sabotaging everything in its line of attack. Chronic sufferers understand that this is the first stage and generally learn to steer clear of the ones the love the most. They turn into vicious beasts that spit words and emotions like tic tac teeth. They are ugly, self loathing beasts. They communicate in shorter and shorter sentences, their emails and texts are brief and disjointed, and socialising is limited. This stage can sometimes last for years dragging down everything in their path. Then the numbness begins, the sleeplessness, the colds and flu and any other bug floating around, the mornings that never seem to come, the mornings that start with a heart attack pain in your chest, the lead boots, the concrete filled lungs, the sore eyes that never seem to open. This is the most dangerous stage as in this stage you search for pills, plan suicide in ridiculous detail, fantasise about pain, death, other’s death, anything to bring back any sort of sensation. Then there is the black. You start driving dangerously playing chicken with trees, mistreating your body hoping for any glimpse of sensation, overeating in search of stomach-aches or starving and obsessively exercising to regain some sort of control. You change your appearance to shed your skin, cutting your hair, tattooing or piecing your flesh, gaining padding to hide, dropping flab to conceal, control. You give yourself over to the black. People with chronic depression don't ask for help and nor do they want it because sufferers of this disease intimately understand the workings of the beast. They don't need sympathy, suggestions, supportive nods they need to be left alone while they slay the beast. A chronic sufferer knows how to tread water, how to hold their nostrils above the black sewerage filling their lungs. They know that the sun will keep rising spewing its rays through their windows even when they can barely keep their eyes open. They know the black will eventuality turn grey and the coming day will seem a little more bearable, their heart less like concrete, their lungs less heavy, more willing to breathe, to fight for air. They understand that if they stay still long enough, calm long enough, mimic emotions well enough that the light will come back. So if you know a sufferer, if you know me, please stay calm, stay at arm’s length but please stay in view as I will be back in the grey, back to the land of the living once more but for now I have a black beast to slay but don't worry as I've been here before, I've seen worse than this before, and I will once again live through this. Don’t be concern as I've got this bitch, but convincing her may take some more time and that’s all I ask of you now. Time, time to fight her but for now I’m exhausted from kicking the shit out this dog so I’m just going to rest for awhile and lay down and stroke her rancid fur until I find the energy to start kicking, and fighting the bitch once more. Sometimes the worst part of this disease is how seductive she can be. Like an addiction, the hole she creates is lined with candy, sweet and warm and like a bear you just want to crawl in there and gorge yourself. I’m gorging, I’m self indulgent, my mouth is covered in her stickiness, and I’m hibernating in a hollow log, a very dark, black hollow log. But the good thing about these logs, even the darkest ones, is that if you keep moving through it you will come out at the other end. Chronic sufferers of depression, the ones that learn to survive, the ones that accept this ailment as a part of them, the ones the factor depression into their daily life, know more than anything that the most important thing is to keep moving. One step after another. One foot in front of the other. I may seem to you to be stagnant, to be consumed, almost motionless but I’m moving, I’m crawling through this log and I’ll see you all soon on the other side. xxx