The fight between depression and anxiety is the fight between not caring at all and caring about everything at once.
It is long, sorrowful, lonely sobs that attack in the night and tell me they will never leave.
It is a constant state of feeling like I’m barely holding on and I’m slipping but it won’t give out.
It’s like in “The Lion King,” when Mufasa is hanging on above the stampede and I am Mufasa, but I am also Scar, and my biggest enemy is myself and I can’t get away and I don’t know whether or not I will be able to hold on but I know that if I do fall, in the end, it will still be me that pushed me over.
It is going throughout the day taking deep breaths in and out, just like your therapist told you, but you just can’t seem to get enough air.
It is when you lean a little too far back in your chair and that panic comes in your heart that you might fall, but that little panic in your heart becomes a constant feeling, and you want so desperately to just sit back up in your chair and have stability but the feeling doesn’t stop and you are still panicking whether you are standing, sitting or curled up in the fetal position on the floor, trying to comfort yourself.
It is like a 50-pound weight is just sitting on your chest and you want so desperately to push it off but you simply cannot get your grip.
It is soft, lonely wails in the dark that turn to sobs and then to sniffles and then right back into sobs because the only thing that seems to come naturally to you is crying.
And you feel like you are so, so alone, but you do not want to be around anyone at all. You don’t want them to see you weak and you don’t want them to see you suffer.
It is when you want to push absolutely everyone away, including your family. because you don’t know how to explain what is going on. You think you just need time and space to clear your head but really all you want is just to escape your head, just to have five minutes away from your thoughts that don’t stop condemning you.
It is the pain of a stab in the heart and your stomach twisting into a pretzel. It is unrelenting.
It is vomiting alone in the dark in-between sobs and cries out to God, like, “Where are you,” but I know He is here and I know He is hurting too, but why won’t it just stop?
It is questioning every single thing you did that day and have ever done in your life all at once and wondering if it has all just been a mistake.
It is the endless nights and days where you don’t even know if it’s night or day and frankly you don’t care, you are simply trying to make it through each minute without exploding.
It is feeling as though you are going to explode and even praying you do, just that it would all stop.
It is pleading with yourself to just be quiet enough you can sleep because sleep is your only escape, even though you know when you wake up you will wake up to a panic attack and everything you are trying to escape was right there waiting for you. But you sleep anyway because that is your only peace and only quiet to the point where it is a vacation to yourself.
It is where you can’t even face your own family because you can’t even face yourself.
It is wanting to run away and hide but also wanting to scream at the top of your lungs: “Hey, I am here and I am hurting!”
But you know there’s nothing anyone can do besides feeling sorry for you. Plus, if you tell them you’re not well, then you have to explain why and explain what’s going on in your head but you don’t even know why and how do you put into words what you feel, which spirals into another episode of guilt-filled self-hatred.
And all of this continues on and on in a vicious roller coaster cycle.
It is the fact I can sit here and type out every similarity or analogy I can think of to tell you how it feels, and still knowing this doesn’t compare to the pain it really is.
By Samantha Toews for TheMighty