Depression & Anxiety: What does it feel like?

 

Read this journal entry to understand one person's feelings.

 

 

Darkness is my life.   It is all I have known or at least now know.  Yet in this world of no light, there is freedom.  I am free; however I am a prisoner of my freedom and of the darkness which surrounds me.  I fear not this darkness for I am a part of it.  It is my world and my life.  This knowledge comforts my pain.

 

Alone I stand here.  Here is my home.  Darkness lacks not of beauty but of companionship.  For friendless as I may be, I am in admiration or rather in complete awe of the simplistic beauty of my prison.  Drowning in the dreary beauty of it, I am silenced and alone.

 

Surrounding me is a world under the weighted veil of a shadow.  Perhaps darkness is a poor description of it for it is not completely void of light.  Light does penetrate through the thick, constant, black cloud layer hovering heavily overhead.  Teasing as this light may be, it is not enough to add the luxury or nuisance of color into my Godless surroundings.

 

Not that I believe in no God, I merely believe that here He does not dwell.  Maybe at one time He did, but there currently is nothing left here but the remains of whatever once was; the ashes of it all.  Was God punishing me?  Or am I simply just a lucky or cursed survivor of His punishment?  If He was here in this vast land of grey, I would ask.

 

Often times I think to myself doubtingly if this is real.  What is real?   Does reality have a purpose?  If it is true that reality has a purpose, then I do not exist in reality for here there is no purpose best as I can figure.

 

Imagine a world of no color, a world of no life.  Logic exists only in your mind because this is a world of no logic.  There is ocean but there is no life.  No life but that of my own.  The ocean is black.  The thickness of this black is even more so than that of oil.  The only reflection the ocean permits is that of the sky overhead which is not black but grey.  Even stranger yet is the lack of tides.  Ocean water along the infinitely long, lonely shores is stiller than that of a lake on a calm summer’s day or a cold winter’s night.  The only waves that occur are due to the terrifying storms.

 

The land which meets the water is not land at all.  It is ashes; Piles and enormous mounds of ashes.  Ground, existing as it might, is so deeply covered by these ashes that it would only a waste of time and effort to search for it.  Not that time is not plentiful around here: for I have more of it than I know what to do with. Imagine, as you will, the origin of these mountains and valleys of ashes for I know not nor care to know.

 

Meaningless to me now are words such as trees, flowers, birds, cities, animals, dirt, bugs, and even people.  All of these are only distant memories which I can hardly even recall.  Memories come as unwanted flashbacks.  “Is this hell?” you might ask.  Ha! Even hell I am sure is more populated than this, for misery enjoys company or so they say.  Except for the fact that I am not miserable, I suppose you could refer to this as my private little hell on Earth.

 

My memory fails me as to how long I have resided here.  Maybe this is all I have known, but vaguely familiar and strange flashbacks remind me of others and other times.  Appearance-wise, I do not even remember what I look like except for my body which I can visibly see.  I feel not ashamed at the nakedness of my skin for what purposes have I of clothes?  The air is neither cold nor hot.  By a difference of a few degrees, it only goes from warm to cool but is mostly in between.

 

Night nor day but simply an average of the two exists.  I see no sun nor moon nor even a star.  The sky resembles an overcast sky during a sunset when the sun has already gone down, just beyond twilight, when the colors have already just faded out and yet enough light remains to make out the forms of the grey clouds overhead.  No more and no less light remains.  Now that you have gotten rid of your understanding of night and day, I will explain mine.

 

Day is merely the night ever so slightly illuminated so that the sky is not two grey shades away from black but maybe seven or so.  That is all.  Oh, I do suppose the wind is another thing that can be used to characterize night aside from day.  Night is the only time of the horrifying screaming winds.  Not a steady wind flow but more like gusts of wind.  It makes my hairs stand on end and chills creep up and down my back, not because of temperature, but because of the terrifying shrieking screams.

 

Sometimes cool and sometimes warm, the breezes begin.  Unusual as it may sound, these aimless winds carry with them what I identify as human screams; Screams of fear, of confusion, and of knowledge of some impending doom. These aftermath screams tell of some doom befallen upon the world which used to exist around me leaving only the ashes and aftermath wind of screams to remain.  The thought is actually quite chilling.

 

Even odder yet is the miracle of my survival.  I drink the tasteless water of the great ocean and eat the tasteless ashes of the land.  How I live I cannot explain.  Either these do not contain flavor or I have lost all sense of taste.  This would not surprise me for I have lost all sense of feelings.  Or perhaps all of my feelings and emotions are so deeply shielded that they have only become a blended blur of a single general emotion.

 

Emotionless, I am neither happy nor sad.  I feel neither remorse nor pity for the fact of my survival after the demise of the human population if that is what indeed what has occurred.  I merely continue on from day to day with a sort of repetition.  Fear I have not for my future nor have I uncertainty.  Things shall simply continue as they do and that is all.  No unusual complicated explanations exist.  This thought brings me neither comfort nor pain.

 

Pain is only a distant memory.  Blurred as it may be, I feel a bit of pain here and there when the flashbacks come.  Continually I see a child or rather a baby in these dreamlike states.  Meaning has all but been lost for I know not what the baby stands for or who he is.  All I do know is that the innocent beauty of the infant comforts the pain I feel from the twinkle in his eyes.  Who is this child that haunts me?  Had I once been a mother to him?  What has happened to separate us and leave me here on this God-forsaken land?

 

Once again, as the memory fades, so does any remnant of feelings.  My emotions again leave me here in this in-between place.  In-between I stay with not a care in the world; Or at least not in this world.

 

Seating myself upon these ashes I stare blankly out over the vast misery around me.

 

 

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