Some feelings are like old familiar friends. Depression is like that for me. When I’m not in it, I don’t remember it. I remember it’s bad. I remember the darkness, but it’s different to feel it again. It’s the difference between remembering what a room looks like and actually walking through the door. Being inside it again. Feeling it when the episode starts. It can be slow at the start. An intrusive thought “I don’t wanna be here” but then it’s gone. You bat it way like a fly or a bad smell. When it hits you fully though, when you’re really in it, it’s everything. It’s who you are, you’re nothing else. On the outside, you look the same, smiling and pretending, it’s so much work. But inside it’s a different story. You start to hate yourself. You’re so alone, so unbelievably alone. And you can be with someone you love, but you’re not really with them. We think we know what’s going on with other people, but we don’t. You never really know what’s going on inside someone else’s head. Everyone is fighting a battle you can’t see. We all have blindspots. And you know it’s you. It’s something wrong with you and it’s also exhausting. So goddamn shitty and exhausting, and, it’s helpless . It’s a void. And existing takes so much energy. You wanna sink into a hole of nothing where no one talks to you, and you don’t have to smile or talk or be. Anyway, it’s familiar. I’ve been here before gotten out of it before, but the getting out part becomes the room that you remember but aren’t it. and that’s what’s scary. Being back in the room, where depression lives is a sharp pain and an overwhelming numbness