Past-tense
It's been a while since I've written anything. It's curious to me that I began this website in March. Arguably, February, March, and April were the darkest months of my life. It was strange to observe my depression change from an internal mental chaos to an external physical weight, a heavy blanket that I could observe within my mind but do nothing about. Whereas I had been restless and filled with words last year, this Spring, all I did was sleep. Sleep sleep sleep, 16 17 18 hours a day. I'd leave my room once a day to go to the bathroom, maybe eat an apple or a few carrots. It turns out that that scene in Euphoria with Zendaya in bed, god forbid, is actually quite an accurate depiction of what I felt like. The entire experience of depression is very unglamorous, but especially this small secret of depression – this experience of lying in bed so long ignoring your bladder, until your body absolutely can't take it anymore, is in pain and close to toxic shock; infection – that was a strange secret to learn. How annoying to find myself to be another cliché; how strange to find a moment of such specific truth in that TV show.
The entire experience was very strange. I was so absolutely used to my depression – my attitude towards life and death – that I didn't necessarily feel bad or sad, per se. The more I felt unaware of my mind, the stronger my physical symptoms became, so that I knew not from my mind that I was depressed, but first, from my body. I became used to a distinctive type of headache, one that translated itself to a vulnerable dispostion. I couldn't talk to anyone, couldn't face the people I lived with; actively hid from them. I had no appetite. I'd cry at a moments notice without any real impetus. Sometimes my thoughts became shockingly violent towards myself, as if my unconscious had grown alien, had become a force that projected rotten, putrid thoughts onto my mind – thoughts of decapitation, cutting my chest wide open, screaming until my vocal chords ripped. Worst and most prominently, I'd sleep for days and ignore everything in my life without really choosing to. Eventually, I'd come around and untangle myself, but this moment of facing all that one had ignored was awful, the switch from death (sleep) to life terrifying. Those were strange and numb days. Waking up when it was already dark, going to sleep before it was light.
Quite a lot has changed since. It's incredible how much more time you have when you're not depressed.
I haven’t touched either courgette in my fridge since, but I spent the rest of that afternoon listening to Thursday Afternoon over and over again. In the HEMA, in my now-ruined coat, the email "Classes are cancelled for the rest of the semester”. On the bike-ride home, still, over and over and over, feeling like I’m balancing my life like a little girl playing with a fragile glass marble rolling it around her palm wondering whether it will drop. This marble is slightly pink, just like the album cover.
Thursday Afternoon is a good song to slowly roll a marble around your palm with. By this time, it had become the only song that day that could bring me any comfort. Goodnight.
