What I've been going through lately

This is from a letter I wrote to a friend on the 28th of December.  

I've been feeling really disconnected lately.  I don't know what it is, maybe the season . . . Regardless, I've been all at ends.  If you know what I mean.  Just feeling lost.  It's annoying, but I don't quite know what to do about it.

Even now.  Even now I am depressed.  Not sad, but smothered.   Like I'm being weighed down by styrofoam.  I guess that's the best description for it.  Yes, it feels as awkward as it sounds.  There's a certain amount of hopelessness that goes with it, and I wonder if it will ever change, if I will ever feel the sky again.  Intellectually, I know that this is a temporary state, that I just have to muddle through and I'll eventually make it to the other side and drop my burden.  Emotionally, I fear it will never change.

 I look back on my life, my history, and it seems like I have always been this way.  I look forward, to my future, and it's hard to see an end.  The things I want: the life, the love, and everything that goes with life and love seem so far out of reach.  Taunting, rather than encouraging.  Sometimes I despair, but not that much.  Mostly I try to lose myself.  Not think of it.

Depression sucks.  I consider my depression to be a relatively mild form of it, and it still sucks.  It is not all-encompassing, and doesn't narrate my life, but it does color me.  There is no concrete sadness in my depressive state, there's no concrete emotion of any kind.  My emotions flutter by as quick and soft as the wings of an insect: here, then gone again.  Nothing is stable and nothing lasts.  It would be discombobulating, if I could be discombobulated.  I don't cry.  I don't gnash my teeth.  I don't moan.  I don't contemplate ending it all.  Mostly I just sit on the couch with a cat on my lap, watching too much TV and sleeping too little. 

It's always a struggle for me when I begin to pull myself out.  My moods become sharper and more pronounces.  I laugh.  I cry.  I worry that I don't do either enough.  I sleep more: 1) because I'm catching up from my marathon of sleeplessness, and 2) because it's physically exhausting to feel feelings.  I try to be more physically active too, because it's so easy to fall back into the habit of sitting like a lump.  Actually, it's so easy to fall back into the habit of being depressed.

Because for me, it's a habit.  Kind of.

Whatever.  I just mean it's an easy place for me to stay.

I don't want to stay there any more.  I'm at that point in working my way out.

So that's what I've been dealing with.

Later.