Bitter Slumber

My name is Phil, and I am depressed.

Do you want to hear a joke? “Depressed individuals would attend regular group therapy if they could ever just get out of bed.” *pause for laughter* I don’t know, it might need some work. It seems I am cultivating quite the dark sense of humor lately, which when most of your days are black and not very funny, one must do to cope. As they say, it’s only funny because it’s true.

My therapist is always telling me that it is ok to stay in bed if I don’t feel like getting out, but in my own superior arrogance I always smirk (on the inside, at least) because I am not that depressed. But lately I have slowly become aware of the fact that I do, indeed, struggle with something as simple as getting out of bed. I wake up, and the first thing I do is check my email and twitter, which isn’t unusual, most people these days do that, but then I spend the next few hours checking my email and twitter. I excused myself because, blessed by my iPad, I could bum around online and not have to get out of bed and stumble over to my computer to do so. But the reality is that without my iPad, I probably would still stay in bed.

Even when I do drag myself out and get dressed and eat breakfast, I still end up back in bed my mid afternoon for a nap. I wake up sometime later and then spend a few hours doing whatever before I am back at it for “bedtime”. So, what is with all the sloth? Am I lazy? Am I exhausted from all the nothing I do? No, not really. I am depressed, and a physical symptom of depression is decreased energy and perpetual tiredness.

The irony, of course, is that I have trouble sleeping. At night, in the morning, in the afternoon, it takes me hours to drift off, and I don’t sleep very heavily when I am asleep. I wake easily. Many, many times, my body is very relaxed, but my brain is still very active. I might look as if I am asleep, but I am aware of everything and am not unconscious. It is rather torturous, actually. During the winter, I lay aware at night listening to the pipes groaning and knocking as they freeze, or thaw, or distribute heat. In the summer, I hear birds all night long, twittering and singing. I listen to trucks idling in the parking lot behind the apartment. I can’t not. I am not quite awake, but not asleep either. The mechanism in the brain that shuts off sensory perception during normal somnolence in normal people doesn’t seem to work for me. So I am always tired, perpetually sleeping, and never refreshed.

In high school and college I didn’t notice so much, but before I got married I had adapted my lifestyle to my depression. For one thing, I would routinely stay up until 3 or 4 am. I found that being truly exhausted made it easier to actually sleep. Sometimes I would stay up for several days in a row in order to be able to fall into a deep sleep. I wouldn’t wake early, something that is impossible now with a wife who rises early every single morning. I would be able to stay asleep until 10 am. I never was a morning person, but I have no choice now and the result is I feel more like a zombie than ever.

But all of these reasons, and schedules, and troubles, the fact of the matter is this: it is easier to skip painful hours of a depressed life by existing in a drowsy, dream like state. I don’t have to face the constant, conscious pain that is my life. I never can totally quiet the clamorous thoughts and endless analyzations of my life and everything that is broken in it, but sometimes, while nearly asleep, the mental anguish simmers to a whisper. Sleeping a lot is a mental and physical coping mechanism.

And this doesn’t even get into the dreams. I never know if I am going to have a psychotic, horrific nightmare or a fully lucid euphoric dream. I have way more of the former than the latter. My unconscious mind is a horror film. It literally scares the hell out of me. All my dark energy, repressed rage – sorrow – pain, and the trauma rises from the deep midnight to assault me. Sometimes I am afraid to fall asleep. But I still do, because, very rarely, I get a good dream. I am fully me, and fully powerful, and I can do things, and feel things, and I am happy and full of light. I feel like a person, right up until that moment I wake. These good dreams are a cruel fantasy, but at least I am able to live, however briefly. This is why abusing medication is such an easy thing for depressed people: we know the high is not real, but it ceases to matter. Any chance or excuse to feel good, we’ll take. A drowning person will do anything for one gasp of air, no matter how toxic.

Which leads to the conclusion of this sad examination: I am so very weary. I just want it all to end. I am so tired of being tired. The minutes are growing ponderous and I don’t want any more. I just want it to stop, finally, and not continue. *pause for laughter* but it doesn’t. It can’t. I won’t. My body isn’t worn out yet. Rib cage. What an apt name: cage. I no longer believe in a heaven or an afterlife, but I don’t care. I don’t need paradise when I die. I’ll take silent, eternal oblivion. But not yet.

So if you’ve ever wondered how depressed people can sleep so much, there’s a little glimpse. I’m sorry, I wish I could give you a happier look into my life today, but that wouldn’t be accurate or honest. This is the reality of depression, and if you live with or know depressed people, it’s better to have an honest look into their world rather than a manufactured image. You want happy, look elsewhere, I don’t have it.

I’ve been writing about my depression lately, and if you missed the previous ramblings you can search my blog for “depression” as I’ve tagged all the entries thusly.