Not everything is meant for keeps.

There are things I notice, and things I don’t notice enough. Perhaps, I do not notice the specific day the trees begin to droop and grow old with winter, or how people walking in groups align their footsteps, though I notice mine, or the personality of a child by the way they laugh, a fleeting glimpse into a world yet untamed.

The things one learns about life are not always meant for keeps, like the collage of absurdities, presented to you as norms and certainties that govern our polite society; like tidy categories, or gender binaries, or a patchwork of contradictions like me; or something simple like the hint of an old bruise, or the wild splash of soap in your eyes; like children who learn too early about death and sexual intentions, and are not yours to teach; or how some stains are impossible to remove. Like the nights and days of clutching to my bed because I couldn’t face the world or myself; or how for a moment as fleeting as the firefly’s glow, she looked at me differently because she was just as lost as me.

Or like the powerful manifestations that can arise from conversations, or how one can shovel the pain and numbness, day after day, to clear the driveways of one’s brain, just so one can make it another day; or the way you can move the shine in your eyes to a certain spot to hide your disarray of thoughts; or the way my friends do not know I can hear the sadness in their voice when they say things are fine, when they are not; or the way she doesn’t have to smile for me to know she is happy, but took a tear from her eyes to know I once broke her heart; or like the escalation in my late mother’s voice, when she was alive, when she’d realise that I am on the other end of the line, and I would feel complete.

So what do you do? You turn around, walk away and keep your balance. Some things are just not meant for keeps, because they will rot inside you and make you regurgitate the poison.

Some things I embrace, some things I throw out to the pigeons and lost souls who search for meaning, and some things, I let take me to heights I never knew I could reach.

I am having one of those days

I am having one of those days where this feeling is so impenetrable that I can’t believe I am able to sit upright. It feels like the force of my traumatic past is colliding with a bleak future that promises nothing but the same amount of pain.

Yet, here I am, sitting at my laptop, writing. How is this possible? The truth is that I don’t know how it’s possible for me to be coping with this as well as I am. Over time, however, I’ve learnt that my brain tires itself out by trying to reason it’s way through this feeling and my thoughts quieten. I am thoroughly numb from it.

Perhaps, it is this numbness that lets us survive these feelings, or rather, the fluctuation between feeling overwhelmed and feeling nothing. Our brains constantly tries to make sense of what they don’t understand and this feeling is so complex that we may never fully understand it.

So here I am, stumbling through the path, the pages, the words, the cages. Crushed under ticking clocks, desperately walking, kicking rocks. Somewhere on that road, I found a word so the only thing left to do is to discover some more, so for now, I’ll just stay at home and die some more - a new normal.

It was difficult to get up today.

Ask me how many hours I slept. I wouldn’t be able to answer. 2 ? 14? 8! That’s the right number, isn’t it? It’s hard to tell anymore. It all seems to be one big blur, a never ending nightmare that decides by itself when it wants to continue and end, and that is not even the worst part. The worst is not being able to tell when it will slowly creep back up, or when I’ll start denying it even when it does. Sometimes, I have to ask myself, is it okay to be happy today? Or will I be forced to fight that losing battle again later on tonight? I do not know, and that makes me wonder if happiness is a thing I can truly obtain. That is when I remind myself, ‘Happiness is a choice’, and honestly, some days it helps, but most days, barely.

Ever since I was a kid, I remember being depressed and it makes me wonder, what is the evolutionary advantage of feeling like crap? How will it effect evolution? Technically, the brain plays a crucial role role in promoting survival, so the pressures of evolution should have left our brain resistant to such high rates of malfunction. Mental disorders should be rare — why isn’t depression? Check out this article on Depression’s Evolutionary Roots by Scientific American.

Sorry to digress, but I’ d like to apologize to all my friends and family beforehand. You might ask me before what? Well, before the mask I wear slowly starts to crack under the pressure of false smiles and years of fixed sentences designed to make you believe that everything is going absolutely perfect in my life. Before my facial expressions can no longer match the lies that I have been feeding both to you, and myself, and you see the sadness in my eyes, the one I’ve been hiding for so many years.

Before that heart of yours possesses you to ask me “What’s wrong?”, and my eyes instantly turn into a glare directed toward you and it seems like you’re the cause of my attitude. I promise you, you are not. I get infuriated when I get asked that question, not because you ask what’s wrong, but because that questions makes me realize that I don’t really understand what’s wrong myself even though I have been searching for an answer for years…

And on my journey I have found out quite a few things.

You’ll meet people who will say it’s all in my head. You should cut those people off immediately because obviously they don’t know where the brain is. Of course, of course it is in my head and it refuses to leave. You may start to also develop anxiety. This is not always the case, but it does happen sometimes. If depression was the blade that caused the wound, then anxiety would be the salt shoved in afterward. Such a sinister duo!

Depression can make you feel like you don’t want to do anything and then anxiety whispers in your ear that if you don’t do anything then you will fail at everything. The domino effect will be like a new religion for you. You will apply it to every aspect of your life. Oh, and the ones who say you are doing it for attention, well, you will simply learn to ignore them, because you know from experience that with the duo of depression and anxiety dancing inside your mind, panic attacks are your best friend, and the last thing you want is more attention for them while you are lying in bed or standing in the middle of a party Saturday night. It feels like you are dying in a coffin, made just for you.

One other phrase that irritates me is “I know exactly how you feel”. No. You don’t. Depression is unique to everyone, as is the solution. Some people people will respond better with antidepressants, some with simply finding someone they can talk to, some will experience it gradually and some instantly. In fact, I find my depression to be a little interesting because, sometimes, it happens slowly and other times it just…sorry… it seems my mask has finally broken, and honestly, I’m really tired right now, so I think I’m going to head to bed. Can’t wait to do this all over again, tomorrow.