Really Generic

Something is eating her up inside. A dark stone like a knotted fist sits inside her chest. It’s prone to spreading, worming up into her throat and down into her belly like a parasite. When it wraps around her throat she wants to cry, struggles to breathe sometimes. When it coils into her belly it sits heavy and low as though waiting to burst. Sometimes it’s panic, sometimes it’s despondency of the deepest and most oppressive kind.

The feeling she lives with is like a desperate urge but she doesn’t know what the urge means or what it wants. If she knew maybe it would be easier. Go for a run, eat something green, chat to a friend. Lord knows she’s got a lot of friends who love her. She’s so full of love for these friends and her family that sometimes she might explode, the good kind this time.

She doesn’t like to talk about it though. Not when it’s bad. It’s a bizarre feeling to have, to feel like she can’t turn to anyone but to also know that she could, because the only thing stopping her is herself. There is nothing rational about this.

Her rational mind knows this is insane. Her rational mind knows she is loved, she is healthy, she is financially stable, she is educated and well-read, and has always been all of those things. To anyone looking in on the outside her life is a walk in the park.

The dark knot inside her doesn’t listen to any of that, not when it has seeped all the way through her like a disease, black fog that chokes and binds and blinds. It’s more than a drop of ink tainting the watery slosh of a glass half empty, it’s an entire, muddy inkwell, dumped inside the very middle of who she is, thick, wretched, disgusting. A deluge of utter misery poured into her soul, or the chemical equivalent of one.

When she is like this she can’t find the words to tell anyone. When she’s ok the words would come much freer, but by then it seems trivial, these moods. They seem irrelevant to who she is. If only that were true, if only they were as irrelevant as she pretends they are. True happiness is hard to come by, why ruin it when it’s there? Why extinguish the light, especially when it’s burning as bright as it often is. Her happiness is genuine. She is a bright and cheerful person, she sees the best in life, in herself, in her work and social life, her family and friends especially. She thinks that might be one of the reasons she doesn’t speak about this part of her. She would never want to shatter the illusion, even for herself. Why destroy the good bits that outsiders are privy too when they’re not a lie? This is the most real version of herself.

When the darkness creeps into her and remains for a while is when she hides the most. It starts small, so small she can ignore it for a while. But not forever, by now she should know that’s not how it works.

Another funny thing, although it might seem the hardest thing in the world to put on a smile and laugh as she usually does, when she is serendipitously, or cruelly, forced to engage with other people it never is as hard as she imagined. It comes quite naturally, so naturally she only realises what she was doing afterwards. How did she manage it this time? She can’t remember.

Something akin to a morose terror prevents her from actively seeking interaction, from seeking any form of help she knows is the right thing to do. A frightened apathy omits from the dark knot that throbs in her chest and tugs all her willpower right to the core, so densely forced into the tiniest of spaces within her she can’t do much to overcome it. It’s like a star before it explodes into a supernova, a tiny, compact ball of energy she can’t access.

They won’t understand. She does’t want to become that person. She doesn’t want them seeing her for someone she is most certainly not. She doesn’t know how to even find the words. They won’t come. Lost for words is a very real problem. She imagines going to find someone to tell but the thought makes her wince, too ashamed with the awkwardness she knows will ensue.

Other people have their own issues. She has hers that she will deal with alone.

When she thinks about professional help or help from someone she doesn’t know as a loved one she plays it all out in her head. She knows what they will say. She’s heard it all before. She should do all those things but the thing is, she can’t.

Sometimes, when the topic comes up, she thinks maybe now is the time to say something. But it always sounds silly. To just come outright and say it. The word always sits heavy on her tongue whenever she says it in any context.

Depression.

I am depressed.

I suffer from depression.

She hates when that word is used lightly, thrown around with almost the same connotations as I’m fine. It’s not trivial to her and it’s not trivial to millions of others. Use another word, we have thousands. Don’t be selfish. Let the most selfish sufferers of any illness in the universe be selfish about that word. It is not yours.

So to her, when faced with the opportunity to bring it up it almost makes her gag. How can she use this word when to her it means so much more than a conversation with a colleague, a friend, about a TV character. Her throat closes around it and she chooses another, plucks one from a light version of herself. Occasionally, it slips out and regret rises up inside her like bile. We all slip up sometimes, it can’t be helped.

Today the knot claws at her insides. It isn’t always this debilitating but sometimes it is. It shreds her from her centre as it fights to emerge from deep within her, ripping apart everything she believes herself to be; strong, happy, capable. It leaves her feeling hollow, trapped. Weak, miserable, incapable.

Today is bad. The past few months have been bad. She won’t finish with I’m ok now.