Something is wrong…
Something is wrong…
That’s the feeling I’ve been walking around with for weeks now, and really, honestly for years. Something is terribly, awfully wrong and something horribly bad is just about to happen.
That’s what depression can feel like and what I’ve felt like for the last few months. I feel like something is wrong.
I go to the mall. Christmas is coming. I love Christmas. I love everything about it (except perhaps for the spending money I don’t have to finance it, but that’s no different than any other year). I love the lights and the decorations. The way everything is special. Everything changes. Even coffee cups change to look more festive and beautiful. I love it…I want to love it…but I can’t because something is wrong. There’s a gnawing, nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach that radiates through my entire body telling me that horrible things are coming. Something is wrong.
Maybe I just need to go to the gym. I like the gym. I used to go all the time, and I still go fairly regularly. I’m there about three to five times a week and do an hour on the elliptical. Maybe just putting the music on blast and getting the blood pumping will help. I go…I want to enjoy it…I used to enjoy it…I’m still forcing myself to go because I feel like I’m just not trying hard enough. Studies say that exercise is good for depression don’t they? They do. Well there must be something the matter with me because for all the sweating I do, it hasn’t done bupkis for how I feel lately. I look around at the people there. They seem to be feeling better as they walk out the door…but I don’t…because something is wrong.
Maybe I just need a night out with the bestie. I have the best bestie in the history of besties. If there was an award for bff’s she’d win. Am I too old to use those terms? Meh. I don’t care. She’s mah bestie. J We go out for our weekly stroll around Costco and Walmart (I sometimes think if our teenage selves could walk into the future and see how excited we get over appliances they’d be deeply, deeply ashamed). We yak, we chat, we laugh. I try my best to be present in the moment with her but I’m never fully 100% there…because something is wrong. Something that feels like horrible, wretched guilt is eating away at me moment by moment. I haven’t done anything I need to feel guilty about, but there it is. And because of that I miss out on truly enjoying this night…because something is wrong.
Hey look! It’s my husband of fourteen and a half years. He loves me to pieces. He tells me all the time. We’ve had our ups and downs sure (after seventeen years total together it only makes sense) and we’ve survived it all and are closer than ever. We still get on each other’s nerves but he does lots of nice things for me…but I can’t fully enjoy or appreciate them, because something is wrong.
Did I mention I have two amazing kids? Yep. They’re fourteen and eight years old. They talk to me and I try to listen. I don’t feel like I ever fully do because as they talk, sometimes their voices fade out and the only thing I can think or feel is that something is wrong. I feel like I want to crawl into a hole and hide from the world and everyone in it. My children are getting older and I’m missing out on enjoying them the way I should…because something is wrong.
I wish I had better words to explain it, but that’s truly what it feels like for me, all the time. It feels like something is horribly wrong. No matter what is going on my brain just can’t see its way clear to letting me feel good. And all of those things I described above, those are on a GOOD day. During the bad days, forget it. I do crawl into that hole and say in bed for days, sometimes weeks.
So while I might look perfectly fine that’s quite far off the mark most of the time.
Yes I know others have it much worse. Somewhere out there is someone sleeping in a hut and using plastic bottles for shoes. But you know what? That doesn’t seem to help me feel better. It doesn’t make me feel better any more than it would cure me if I had cancer. It would be ridiculous for someone to say, “Oh you have cancer? Think about all those people who have no shoes. How dare you have cancer.”
And yet we pull this kind of bullshit on people who have brain disorders all the time. It sickens me.
Anyway, it’s 6 a.m. I haven’t slept. I’d like to sleep right now but I won’t fall asleep until I’m absolutely and completely physically exhausted. Why? Do I even need to tell you at this point if you’ve read all the way through?
Because something is wrong…
