Dealing with Severe Depression

Funny, isn't it, how life throws all the same stuff your way?

Over and over, until you're bruised and beaten like a fish

Flailing and bleeding on a hook,

Yearning for the return of water and balance.

But that's not the way it's going to work this time.

I'm not going to miraculously escape the ugly hook of death.

Instead, it has pinned me,

Through my whole body

Slammed securely into the wood beneath me.

A deck? A pole?

Who cares, I'm sunk.

I'll get my water all right.

Boiling. Balance will fly to the other extreme.

I'll be dead before you know it

There won't be a reason for you to hold onto.

In fact, by the time I press the last breath from my lungs,

I may not even remember the reason I did it.

I know I'm sad.

I'm hollow and full at the same time.

I feel like a shell of myself.

I'm filled with this sticky, oozing sadness that occasionally

Hardens into numbness and alternately boils over into suicide.

Everything will be going fine, then suddenly, something will happen...

Typically, someone will say something.

A light will flash--a photographer's split second click

And everything would be better if I died.

Out of anger, out of guilt, out of hopelessness, out of sadness.

It's a whim or a fleeting thought that takes hold and becomes no longer fleeting.

I'm in the ER and just went through three rounds of intake.

It's almost over, this proving myself worthy of treatment.

As if they are double-checking my story for consistency.

I talked to the triage nurse, an ER physician's assistant

Who reminded me of Matt Damon

And had involuntary facial spasms,

Then a social worker, middle-aged and perm-haired.

Now I'm in the psych ward without my husband.

We kissed goodbye after talking to the obese psych therapist

Who couldn't figure out how to take my blood pressure.

Finally, "Nurse Betty" did the intake into hell.

Stripped of all the things in the world I had left to care about:

My LoTR bracelet, wedding ring, and Jason.

Gone.

I've got nothing now.

Curse it.

I thought I was in hell before. No.

Now I'm in the fire pit of hell, burning before Satan.

And I can't even smoke.

How can you be in a goddamned psycho ward and not be able to smoke?

I should have taken care of myself before and I wouldn't be in this hole.

Four women are outside my room watching TV.

I saw this show the other day and don't have the strength to watch it again.

I don't have the strength to live.

Being here is reverting to primitive.

I have none of my distractions here.

No computer, no great toys to play with.

Not even a goddamn book to bloody read. Christ.