You May Skip This

Everybody always talks about life. Everywhere I go I always manage to see something someone has written about it, or overhear a conversation or see the gratitude written all over a strangers face when they narrowly miss death or injury. Life is kind of a funny thing, isn't it?

Maybe it's just me, but even though about 40% of my friends are depressed, I can't seem to escape from people who are so grateful to be alive. It's almost sickening, really. Because when they talk about how happy they are, I just want to smack them. Maybe it's the exasperation of hearing it so many times, maybe it's the superior sound in their tone, but it's more likely that I am jealous.

See, I have this feeling that that will never be me.

A very smart, very brave woman said "I was suicidal. If you've ever been depressed, you're eyes stopped at 'was' and not suicidal." And as I was reading that all I could think about was that holy shit, yes, yes, that describes it perfectly because those two sentences, my god they say more than a novel ever could.

It's like there are two groups; us and them. There are differences between the two groups and it's something you could only hope to understand if you've been there yourself. We can never be them, although at any moment, they could start becoming us.

I wish so badly that I could be one of those people. The ones that have the ability to say "was" when they are talking about their depression, their self harm, their suicidal thoughts and actions. But the hard fact of the matter is that I'm not. I don't have the kind of patience to "wait for things to get better". I do not have the perseverance, the drive, the ambition, the willpower, the hope.

I've had just about a million people who have said to me that they know what it is like to be this sad all the time. But they can't, they don't. I want to believe that I am the only person out there who has ever felt this way, because when I start to think about how un-alone I really am, I get scared. And I know that this is backwards, that the thought of acceptance and empathy should empower me, should give me some kind of hope, but it doesn't. It makes me sad that so many suffer and it makes me terrified that maybe that suffering could let someone understand me. I don't want to be understood. I do not want people to tell me their stories about what they've gone through because it will only reinforce what I know: I do not deserve this illness.

I am a middle-class, young, healthy white girl. I come from a family who never fully grasped the concept of love, but that's really nothing new in today's society. I come from a place that the other white kids call "the ghetto" but the black kids call "a good home." Our streets do not see deaths. Our children do not grow up with bars on the windows and a gun under their pillow. Everything that happens, happens behind closed doors. The neighbors will pretend not to hear your screams and when the cops come for the third time that week, they will draw their curtains closed and respectfully peek out from the cracks. I do not deserve depression.

Everyone will tell you that depression is an equal opportunity disease- that it can strike anyone, anywhere, anytime. And their right, of course, but for some reason I cannot shake the idea that some deserve this title more than others. Or, to be more specific, everyone deserves the illness more than me.

I've been told that I'm much to hard on myself, but the only response I have to that is something that I am not allowed to say in public or private. We can talk about gay marriage now. Abortion has become appropriate lunch time conversation. Poverty is gaining ground and mental illness is not such a silent topic. But saying that you want to die, that you honestly will not live past 25, that's taboo. People don't know how to react to that, and the worst part is, you aren't saying it for shock value. You're saying it because it's true, because you want these people to understand that you won't be around for much longer, so you have to be hard on yourself now. You have to be the best you can be right now so that when your funeral comes along, it won't be empty and your momma will be able to remember all the good you did.

And school always seemed so important, but it's occurring to me now that I will spend more time writing this blog entry tonight than I will on any one of the six essays I have to do and I cannot make myself care.

Being the best I could be in school was always my priority. I had to do well in high school so that I could get into a good college so that I could get a good job so I could send my kids to good schools and good colleges so they could have good jobs and so on and so forth but I'm realizing that none of that actually has to happen to me and it's a relief. I do not have to come home and cry about my homework and cry about how I cannot make myself do it because I am too busy planning my death  because I will not go to college, and if I do, it will not be for very long so it no longer matters whether it is a 'good' college or not. I will not have children. I do not have to prepare for their futures, or mine, because it simply isn't a problem anymore.

Today I joked about jumping from my balcony. The boy I was talking to told me to "stop being depressing" and all I could think of was "okay, soon, yeah" and then I wanted to laugh. I wanted to laugh because I was happy. Thinking about being so free- no more worries, no more tears, rest your head and go to sleep-well goddamn. That's better.

All my life I have been planning for the future and making decisions based on those plans. But when do I get to enjoy life? When I've already graduated from college and wasted the so called 'best years'. Maybe it's when I'm married, except by then I'll have to start planning my children's futures. Maybe after my children are grown, but I'll be too weak, too old, too cynical to enjoy much of anything. I can't do this. I have to start living so that I can die.

I used to think that I could just get through anything by waiting it out, by finding things to get me through it. But I'm starting to realize that I cannot write the way I used to. I've lost the beauty. I cannot read the way I used to. I've lost the comprehension. I cannot make friends the way I used to. I've lost the ability to connect.

I can't pick up the phone and text someone back most days, much less text them first. I can't focus on anything that makes me happy. My laughter sounds hollow, even to me and my smile hurts my entire face. I just don't even have the energy to fake happiness anymore. I can't do it.

-Lee