My Monster

Tonight is another fight with my monster - depression is again clawing at my heart and my rationality.  It takes everything I have to fight it. Depression takes every bit of common sense, of reason, of logic, of hope and optimism and stamps it out as if none of it had ever existed, and it pulls me down into a deep, dark pit of pain, despair and hopelessness. Sometimes it overwhelms me to the point of total apathy and I'm, for a time, thankfully numb to the pain. I say thankfully because, truly, those moments of apathy are a welcome reprieve from the clawing I feel inside my chest like a true, physical pain.

Sometimes I cry, other times tears escape of their own will through no intent of my own while I lie staring at the ceiling or into the dark of my room, and other times my body is wracked with silent sobs that are so intensely violent my back suffers jolts of sharp, stabbing pain like some great beast is trying to wrench its way out of me through those sobs. Why silent? I don't know. I've never really been able to bring myself to make a sound when I cry during heavily depressive phases. I think, if I'm totally honest, it's partly shame. I'm ashamed of the mental pity party I have that elicit the tears. The thoughts I have both at the time and in hindsight seem so stupid and petty and petulant to me when so many are suffering worse that I don't want anyone to overhear my tears and ask me what's wrong, because then I might have to speak them aloud and I don't want them to hear how stupid my brain is being. So I suffer my depression as I suffer my chronic pain - in silence.

I know this is dangerous to do, should I ever start to lose my fight, but I assure you were it ever to reach that point I would speak out. I promise. And perhaps even now I should. But I really do feel utterly stupid for how my brain thinks when I'm like this. I know my mom would never judge me, but she has enough on her plate.

The truth is, a lot of it is just... genuine loneliness. Aside from my immediate family, I have no friends offline. Everyone I know is all over the place, globally. The nearest in Ontario. I can't drive, so it's not like I can go out and find places to go to meet people and do fun things. And I don't live in a major city so Uber is out of the question, not to mention I can't afford it anyway, really.

My entire future is one gigantic question mark, and most days, I just...can't deal with that. I sit here and wonder, almost every night, about what kind of future I'll have. Will I ever get married to a decent man(unlike my emotionally abusive and manipulative ex husband), and if so when and how the hell am I supposed to meet him in the first place? Will I have kids, and if so, how many? I'm turning 31 in December and the ol' oven has a shelf life before the proverbial D20 roll stars getting riskier. Not to mention if I do have kids, what are the odds that they'll have chronic illnesses that I have? Do I even want to have biological kids in that case, even though it's something I've always wanted? Or a that just being selfish as fuck when I'm putting their health at risk and so many kids are out there needing a good home?

Thoughts like those are just a few of many that race through my mind when the monster's on my back. And I can't make it stop. I don't know how. I just have to grin and bear it until it finally lets go and I can breathe again.

I don't know what to do.

About anything.

And that is the most terrifying and haunting thought of them all.