The following text is unedited stream of conscious remembering of my day yesterday, mingled with memories of other moments in my depression, to fill in the blanks.  It does not reflect an accurate expression of what I experience in the thrall of that strangling embrace.  Words can't express the depth of despair, isolation, fear, hurt, hate, pain, numb, confusion, exhaustion, apathy, agitation, desperation and adjectives we haven't invented yet that come together to drag me through the roller-coaster un-amusement ride that is my 'self' in the downswings of depression.  

I could feel it start to build the night before, an ever present pressure, pressure that seems to come from no where, and press on nothing, just a feeling of tightness, wrongness, coldness, sadness.  Tears waiting to roll, fists waiting to clench, pain waiting to spread from my throat and chest, from my heart - into every cell, every fiber of my being. Depression is chronic pain of the soul, and it hurts like nothing I can really wrap eloquent words around, especially because when I go into that place, that dark painful place where all my thoughts are razor blades, everything becomes so - chaotic, disjointed, as my consciousness desperately tries to find a place to flee away, away from the hurt into anything else, longing only for the absence of feeling, that becomes so overwhelming a process that my ability to simply work my brain around simple concepts, sometimes even the awareness of who I am, my name, my location, my every scrap of my identity sloughs away, and what I am left with is a horrible fumbling.

No other pain I've had, comes close.  The spasms that racked my body with irritable bowel syndrome years ago that would land me in the emergency ward howling like a wounded animal, the appendix that almost exploded when I was 13, little, little in the wake of the depression monster.

My self loathing, an uncontrollable presence in this dark, cornering me and telling me how pathetic I am to cower, how pathetic I am to hurt, to create this place, this dark, this monster of myself.  The voices of misunderstanding plaguing me, why can't I just 'turn it off' and 'choose' to be happy and not to hurt.  No control, none, no control over my emotional state. NONE NONE

how can I explain it if you've never experienced it, the terror of it.  I have empathy for those in the first stages of Alzheimer's, knowing that your brain is playing horrible tricks on you, and robbing you of your memories, of your happiness, and you are left so small and helpless and everything in you screaming to do something, anything, to stop it, just stop it, just make it go away.  stop the hurt, I can't hurt any more, why why why is my body, my brain, doing this to me.  Oh I hate me in those moments, I despise myself for turning traitor and of course, the ridiculousness of that position, the obvious escalating of the situation, that trap, that catch 22, I abhor myself for being depressed, I am depressed because I abhor myself.  I sit, and my brain talks to me 'you sick fuck' and I want to fight back, but there is no enemy, only me, and my weakness at my own self destruction.... leads my mind away.

 Yesterday, I barely remember so much of it now.  I know, I remember, feeling sick, nauseated, literally, my stomach churning.  Suicidal ideation had crept in with the intensity of the emotional pain, and my obsession with escape, escape the pain, stop the pain.  I lay in a ball on the bed fantasizing for hours about simply the absence of being.  How I wished I could wish myself away.  How I didn't have that option, that right, to hurt the people I love in my life my removing myself from it, and reminding myself that I wasn't going to do that again, wasn't going to make an attempt.  Wasn't going to take a potentially deadly dosage of handfuls of pills that would take me away, for at the very least some blessedly dreamless hours, and at 'best' for ever.  I made myself a little compromise, no pills, no asphyxiation, no playing with my air supply or my blood supply - all the lollipops of escape I'd licked a few times before.  I fantasized instead about simply stopping to live, rather than trying to die.  I fantasized about not drinking, not eating, and just letting myself wither away.  Like the ill cat that gives up it's will to live and simply decides to find a quiet dark place to die.

Even if I failed, and of course I did, because in this space, in this gloom.  -everything- is failure to me, I cannot see anything but failure, I would have the numbing that comes with dehydration and hunger.  I went well into that night, the day with no food and no fluid, only eating a few mouthfuls of mashed potato late at dinner so Wolfe would feel I had eaten.

How I still hated myself then, because I abhor the deception to, as I do it.  I am a person who has a very hard time telling untruths, even by omission, and particularly to those I love, so it was an ugly game all around.

The little critical demons frolicking in the wake of all my thoughts, and the ridiculous decisions they gave birth to.

I hate it when, in those minutes, hours, days, where the tears flow and I can't stop them, and it's not pretty not pretty at all, covered in snot, inside and out, my sinuses perpetually clogged, my eyes and face red and raw - I hate it in those times, to be that captive of depression, stumbling over every little thing.  Wolfe asking me a question, feeling, the slowness of my mind in trying to 'hear' and 'understand' simple words and concepts.  Unable to concentrate, I have to ask him what he said, sometimes, twice, sometimes more, and then work my head around it.  'Did you want another PRN of anti-anxiety meds'... yes, yes, I think... what, what was that.  What was the yes for, did I say it, no I didn't.  Slowly I focus on the situation, he asked me something, I don't remember, oh... 'I'm going to get you another pill okay?'.  I want to say the word, that yes word, I'm thinking it, my mouth isn't opening, just more tears more squeezing out of sore eyes, a little nod, I manage a little nod... but he's already turned away.  I hate myself for that late nod, for the silence that's taken the tongue from my mouth and turned it into jelly, jelly that is no longer connected to my thoughts, and the rest of my body too.  What time is it, I wonder, how long have I been here, everything is numb and fuzzy now for a moment.  No pain, just numb and fuzzy, but I couldn't tell you the day, or rather think you the day, of the month, or perhaps even the year.  Nothing in my brain connects up to anything else anymore.  Disassociative they call it.  Living dead, zombie. I

Somewhere in there, I slept, for... minutes, hours? My tongue works now, "Daddy, how long have I been asleep for?" Wolfe's voice, a few hours now, did you want something?  do you need me to come give you hugs?" .... "no, it's okay".  It's not okay, of course, but I know that now, still, too much hurt, too much confusion, that any water I drink, will taste dry, any food flavorless and unpalatable, and I can not feel the hugs, and if I do, if anything gets through to the inside, it's little bit of light only seems to make all the dark, all the pain inside, that much darker, and that much more painful.  Better still, to sleep some more.  Sleep, hope that there are no nightmares, hope that when I wake up it won't be as bad, pray it will pass, lighten, or maybe, maybe if I just lay still enough.  I can manage to disappear.  If I disappear, the pain can't find me.

Stay in the dark, and disappear.