The thing about depression is that some days…
You feel fine.
You feel what is considered “normal.”
It is easy to:
Eat, Sleep, Wake.
Then there are the days where you can’t even get out of bed,
Let alone wake up.
Guilt eats at you like a vulture devours a corpse.
No matter how hard you try, sometimes you just can’t get up.
You are afraid to, and when you finally do, you
Can’t Stop.
You are afraid if you stop, you won’t be able to start again, so you
Run
Run
Run
Away from problems that need to be addressed,
from wrongdoings done to you,
from mistakes you made,
and even the wonderful things of life: Love, Laughter, and Sweet Friendships.
Eventually you hit a wall and crash.
You can’t keep going and instead you find yourself back to where you began.
Except this time, everything you ran from catches up to you.
It gets Harder and Harder to
stand, walk, exist…
…and yet…
…those bright things in life…
well, they break through.
Like a candle in a subterranean cave, they illuminate the first step forward.
It seems impossible, but there it is and you crawl,
You dread failure, but drag yourself towards that light anyway.
You use every bit of strength you can muster.
You are fighting against your own mind that tells you it isn’t worth it,
that you aren’t worth it.
You are scraped,
hurt,
burned,
terrified…
…but you keep going,
because in that time that you were running, you saw the light out of this darkness.
You glimpsed life outside the pit your soul is captured in.
You believe the light out there, that life of freedom, is worth it with all your being.
so you run again,
you fall again,
you crawl again,
because some day you will make it out, even if just for a moment.
That’s what depression feels like.
Alyssa is a college student, pursuing a degree in Theological Research. She is outspoken against the stigmas held about mental illnesses and has pushed for it to be treated like an physical illness when it causes absences in the classroom. In high school she was Copy Editor of the newspaper and wrote up to three articles a month, ranging from critical analysis of classroom dissonance to relating books like Narnia and Harry Potter to life after graduation. When not doing homework or writing, she enjoys playing with any dog she comes into contact with, experimenting with new process of making coffee, reading, and having deep conversations over meals with her friends.
alyssa-elliott