There is a light and it never goes out

Reading blogs about depression, makes me wonder 'what is depression? Do I have it?' I do and have struggled with it, but perhaps most poignantly is the following facts of my immediate current state of mind.

I feel like I'm in thick fog right now as I sit and write this and am struggling to hand pick any of the words that are dangling on thin string like strands around my head, choking on the fact I feel totally confused and overwhelmed with no cause, with the onset of a drowsy drunken (clean for a year now) slumber coming my way. The regular feeling of tears burning the back of my eyes, which almost never come anymore. I wish they would, I like to think that they might bring some small measure of relief for at least a while. Perhaps I have used my quota already? The time it takes to type that last sentence is roughly the measure of time this feeling lasts for. In this dreary dreamlike world, most that exists passes in the same way, except the heaving beast itself. When he gets off me and allows me to stand, I'll regain some blood to my head and might function logically again, for the time being at least. It's hard to explain how you can continuously feel exhausted from sitting and starring into corners.

Of course almost everyone who has every made a genuine effort to help has realised the startling simplicity of my predicament... 'You think too much!' If the statement is true I am forced to consider this, (after running through multiple considerations as to the meaning of said revelations) and occasionally ask in an exasperated manner, 'and what do you think happens when you tell me that?'


I hear the water in the fish tank trickling and turning through the filter while the clock continues its steady countdown to an unknown event. The tapping of a keyboard other than mine and the sigh of the spaniel about to turn in for the night, while a distant motorcycle heads away from the house and towards town. I strained my neck about 2 dozen times checking that the headrest of my chair is, in fact still there and hasn't vanished, whilst straining and clenching the muscles of my lower stomach. I feel my pulse rise and my breaths shorten and deepen for no obvious reason; I lower and elongate them again. The headrest is still there in case anyone was wondering, yep, definitely still there. OCD is a means to an end, where the 'means' are never justified and 'ends' never satisfied. I consider getting up to relieve myself and smoke a cigarette whilst trying to work out if the song resonating in my head switches to a 4/3 after the octave drop and how can, in these modern times, anybody incite such hatred because of hard and fast rules set by an unseen, improvable god who despite being almighty and all powerful seemingly requires us to hold each other in such blatant disregard over the smallest of matters concerning daily life? There are a handful of words that I just couldn't find to go in there and now I'm turning the pages of my internal thesaurus, (it won't take long, it's quite a small volume) but most annoying is the fact that those words were key components in establishing my point. The thought process's being a swirling mass of almost pictorial visual fleeting forms, never lingering long enough to seize.

All of the above often happens simultaneously.

Needless to say that it's hard to focus and I get sidetracked easily. If proof was needed, I've reread this twice and still lost my thread.
So it's hard to describe but not impossible to give a 'jist'.

I don't suppose it makes much difference to the grand scheme of things if don't get out of bed, if I don't shower, get dressed and just contemplate if a god has breathed life into my lungs or whether I am just a waste of a very high statistical odd and by-product of evolution. Why the human soul is so troubled, not before establishing once and for all if the soul actually exists. Any real investigation into this, (in the style of Leonardo de Vinci, slicing up bodies to physically locate the soul) would require far too much effort and necessitate getting dressed in any case, so fret ye not.

Nevertheless, had I replied with 'why' to what was obviously meant as simple uncontrived request to 'wash this, chop it up and stick it with the others' whilst at work in just one of string of meaningless soul destroying (if it exists) jobs, the response would have been both unutterable and as unquestioning as mine was the opposite.

How can you not question everything? Yet I see people not doing it every day.

I'm not saying those who go out and work hard to put bread on the table and support loved ones are mugs, it's not like that at all. I envy those people and most I know do question and ponder but still manage to drag themselves out to the necessity of daily life, finding the rewards worth the while.

And herein I would suggest, is the difference. Many feel depressed but find a way through the daily stress and emotional struggles. When you are engulfed by depression, you are rendered powerless until it releases you (temporarily).