A Thousand Cuts

My name is Phil, and I have clinical depression.

Last night I tweeted this:

“Life is a death of a thousand cuts. The question is: can you find meaning before you bleed to death all over the carpet? Me, I don’t know.”

A twitter friend, a fellow nerd and author, asked his followers to tweet to a woman who truly believed she was ugly and to tell her the truth. I perused this woman’s feed, and was deeply saddened to see that her voice was almost gone. Most of her recent posts were retweets from suicidal accounts. [Author’s note: A suicidal account is an account on social media that is almost entirely thoughts, pictures, and poetry about suicide. They are everywhere on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Most are run by truly desperate people. Take a break from kittens sometime and read the pain that no one sees. It will sober you up in a hurry.] I felt so lost and so small. I had nothing to say to this woman that would ease her pain in the least. But I couldn’t back away, I couldn’t just be silent. So I said this:

“You are beautiful and you are not alone. I know your pain and it can get better.”

It was as honest as I could get. Every woman is truly beautiful. Depression is not something you suffer as the only depressed person on the planet. I do know that pain. And it can get better. Why didn’t I say “it will get better”? Because I do not know that to be true. I have been in therapy for nearly two years now. I am on medication. I have worked through so much pain and childhood trauma. But I still don’t feel much different than I did when it all began. I don’t have the black fog, but I am rarely happy or positive or upbeat. I certainly believe that things can get better. I simply lack convincing evidence that things will get better. I was frustrated that such a small truth was all I had to offer a woman in pain.

I am starting to refer to this year in particular as the year from hell. Ever since Christmas, when some things went horribly wrong and got very, very black, this year has been trending downwards. Me and my wife stopped drifting apart and started racing apart. Then she left, and at the time, I was glad to see her go. I got a job and lost it. I have been unemployed since July. I have sold half of anything I owned of value to simply pay bills. Only recently did I force myself to use a little to buy groceries. I lived for a month on hot dogs and microwave popcorn because the last time I afforded food both were on sale. Last night at my brother’s house was the first time I had a substantially healthy meal in months. I am so lonely I want my wife and my miserable marriage back just so I will no longer be alone. I have lost the ability to hope, to imagine a better future, or to dream of anything beyond my current daily misery. I don’t exaggerate and I don’t sensationalize any of that. I try to present it as mundane and boring, because that is what pain has become to me.

So you can see how that can resemble a year from hell.

Most days I do not know how I will endure until evening. Bedtime is a weariness. I toss and turn most every night and sleep badly.

At this exact moment, I have no idea how I will pay the next two bills that are due soon. It is hard to focus on anything else at the moment. If you are a friend and have been following any part of my social media life lately, you will see that on this blog I have been writing a little, and on Facebook I have been posting lots of Lego Portraits. I have no idea where the creative spark is coming from these days, but I jump into it whenever I feel the slightest twinge because it is all I have. I barely enjoy it, I certainly should, I love Lego, but enjoyment isn’t something I have much control over. I try my damnedest, but usually I only manage a lukewarm enthusiasm. But when you are freezing, lukewarm feels very hot.

This is turning into a bit of a ramble, so I think I will end it soon. The rambling fits, anyway. I’ve hit half of tank of gas and have no idea if I’ll be able to afford to fill the tank when it runs empty, but I’ve started to obsess again over how far I need to travel to do anything. I just want this all to end. Not in a slash-the-arteries and swallow-the-pills suicide ending, necessarily. I’d be happy if there was no tomorrow. If everything just ended. No fanfare, no heaven, no hell, no afterlife, just an end to existence. That wouldn’t bother me right now. I don’t want to die, I don’t want to miss the upcoming Ender’s Game or Hobbit films, but right now, I wouldn’t care if I did. I might even prefer a nothingness because nothingness isn’t pain and frustration and misery.

I’m living a death
of a thousand cuts
my blood spills slowly

I watch each drip
drop into the carpet
soaking microfibers and dust
dead skin cell fossils
splashed with the facade of life

given proper suction
you can drain the body of blood
in 8.6 seconds
so why has eternity
come and gone and I still bleed?

I guess that’s life
with blood and pain and carpet
stained corpses of a million dead cells
each having expended purpose, exfoliated

my purpose remains, I’ve yet to be scrubbed
from the skin of the world
so I endure the thousand cuts
seeking my purpose
and my dessication

That’s not very good, but I do get so poetical and more than a bit macabre during these times. Forgive me.