I Battle Depression
The sweeping hand tick tick ticks, but nothing ever changes. And you need the time to pass. Not because you have anywhere to be; you don’t. You never have anywhere to be. You just need the time to be anywhere but now, here. Tick tick tick. You imagine curling in a snow bank for a nap you never wake from.
The left side of your brain maintains the tickety tickety tacks of the keyboard while the right side of your brain, the creative side, reels and spins on your only remaining choices: which way to end your life that evening when you’re back at home.
You traveled to work that morning the way you always do, the usual way, the way it must have always been. Entering the train, head down, while parents grab their small children by the hand and shuffle them away from the crazy person. It would be laughable to think that your sickness was discreet if anything were laughable. You’re as black on the outside as you are on the inside.
Some people were meant to make it, some were not. You are ticked under the latter column. Tick tick tick. Tickety tickety tack.
This is the way you feel when you despondently look at your hands. And having been exactly where you are, I would not be foolish enough to say that it’s all in your head. (“It’s all in my head? Where else could it be?”) But the reality is that you are battling an insidious illness called depression, an illness that robs you of your joy, your spirit, your hope. But this thief’s most insidious trick is having convinced you that it’s stolen something that you never actually lost: courage.
Yes, you still have courage. You may not feel it buried beneath la
Because depression is completely treatable. Once you acquire the tools you need to treat and manage your illness, those once maddening tick tick ticks will transform into the sounds of brush strokes on a canvas, bats cracking on a ball field, light rain pattering on a windowsill. And that which once haunted you will take shape in the realization of the vibrant, introspective person you truly are.
