I found out what depression was when I was 13. It wasn't my own, yet, but what started as a project of discovery became my own mental asylum for years to come. To this day I believe much of how I see the world stems from the life I've tried to live.
Google+ is a now dead social media platform that allowed for similar behavior to what we are still somehow doing here on Tumblr today. Google+ for me, became an area where I could indulge in my niche hobbies and shameful interests (Andy Biersack gay awakening), as well as somewhere I went to experience people in the only way I knew how, through the internet. I found discussion boards and posts; whole communities made for the sole purpose of providing a space where people didn't need to be alone.
Something in your mind changes when you hear people's stories, you see people's scars, and you internalize the fact that these are the effects of a world that does not make room for your grief. You may breathe, create, and die. However, a breath just for your sake, for some, is priced out of reach. How to take the punches in stride becomes a very important lesson to learn as you get older. It doesn't resonate however, that you will need this skill your whole life.
As a teen, I had to contend with the fact that the life that I at times hated so much was a cushy cake walk in comparison to others. The strength I was given seeming like a lesson in resource mismanagement when holding my responsibilities against that of another. I began to hate myself for being unappreciative and simultaneously trying to coddle myself and validate my own struggles in life. "Yes, my parents are unfair." "Yes, school is not really going all that well and I already feel the spiral of directionless life pulling at my feet.".
I drove myself to an "altruistic nihilism". I found a way to believe that we both didn't matter and mattered all at once. And if that was the case, what more can we do than be here for each other. While I was young, I did what I could to be an hear, a shoulder, a friend to cry on, with or to about anything. I read and felt the words of people suffering from the desperate desire to just feel whole.
My every morning waking thought is "I never had it bad, and yet I find myself so weak at times" I would tell myself for years on end, Unable to act on my goals, unable to pursue wants and dreams, that I wasn't applying myself because I wasn't myself to begin with. Wanting to turn the game off for good and hope that it wasn't my last life.
At night I think "There are people who are dealing with more and waking up to the sun the next day". They take their medicine and go to the job they hate. They find those small wins in-between the ruin and stress and lay down at night hoping that they can get just one more of "those". And there are the people who dealt with less and aren't with us anymore. Because pain doesn't wait, it doesn't discriminate or create options for you to get out of it. You don't get to choose when you feel it or how long. You don't get to say that it's not there anymore. Once it's on you, it's yours to deal with. At night I let my worries lull me to sleep like an old veteran too used to the bombs and chaos to exist without it. We walk around, soldiers to the world we live in, silently mourning everything we lost the day before, the month prior, years ago.
And in all that somewhere in the middle is me and you. Very sad, and yet very happy to be here. Very alone in our own hurt and struggle and pain, but very together in our mortal dilemma.
