a cage without a key

That's the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it's impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key.
- Elizabeth Wurtzel

i did not have such a good night last night. one of the hardest of all things about depression is what it does to the people around you that mean the most to you. you want them to understand, to see how they affect you. you want them to understand that you have a terrible disease of the mind that does not go away, does not give up and will continually make your life hard.

it's amazing to consider that something so seemingly intangible can be such a huge weight, such an insurmountable thing that it would cause the bearer to choose death over living with it. people crash in a plane on a mountain, eat each other and live to tell the tale. they do it because help will come and they will survive. they know it, even if it amy not in the end prove true. at the time, there is hope of an end, salvation and release.

so you end up making choices, doing things that seem like the right idea or even choosing to bury your head in the proverbial sand and things go wrong, mistakes are made, lies are told, so many little problems that combine into bigger ones. and you try to forget them, to move on, to survive because to you each day is just another lucky break combined with the opportunity for more to go wrong. but those around you, those closest, they don't understand.

they remember all the mistakes, they remember all the problems and they remind you, sometimes they punish. i'm usually thought of as weak and useless and a problem or so I'm told on occasion.

last night was one of those nights. it came to a boil or a head or whatever clever turn of phrase that you want to apply. it usually does around bill time. the accusations started early on about how my mistakes caused us to have to pay out so much, how i should be more helpful, how i should be making more money, how i'm not focusing on our future. then came the talk of how it's my fault we don't have a house instead of the townhouse we now have, how we don't have a lot of retirement money saved up yet, my fault too, how our house is messy and i don't put enough into it and i'm not making enough money as i haven't finished my degree and i'm causing all sorts of stress with my poor attitude and my sudden fits of anger and how it just might be so much better if we were divorced and i could fuck my own life up alone and on and on and on.

once the immediate pain and tears clear up and i can lay there quietly in bed thinking while my significant other drifts off to sleep blissfully unaware of the massive hurricane of trauma going on next to her, i can begin to think again and the panic sets in once more, the fear of being alone and knowing that i can't handle it, that i am doomed, that it's all my fault, that i am so tired of failing, that i am desperate, that i am losing it, that i won't let her down again, this time i'll fight it off for good, everything is shit and it this is all i can expect for the rest of my life than what the fuck is the point in continuing except that i'm too much of a chickenshit to do it and then i think about the toruble i'd cause, the people i'd hurt and the guilt floods in even more and i finally fall asleep hours later.

she doesn't get it, she refuses and so i'm shit out of luck. i can't afford to leave, i can hardly typed it without panic and guilt spiking me through. besides, what if i'm wrong? what if i am the reason and everything is going to clear up if i just hang on a little longer?

the funny thing is that she doesn't realize that i punish myself so much more exquisitely that she ever could with her brutal, blunt flailing. i am the master of my own pain, able to lock myself up with indecision and pluck away at the scars and scabs and fears and wounds that live inside me.

god i hate the mind that i live in and i hate the drugs to treat it. either i am in pain au natural or i am on meds and a dull, unfeeling wretch with all the lovely side effects. which is worse? trade one cage for another and either way, i am never really happy.