The Thoughts Inside My Head

As I am sitting here, in my apartment bedroom watching a show on Netflix that I have been binge-watching all day, I can’t help but to feel alone and depressed even though I am not. My thoughts in my head keep me awake at night. I wonder sometimes if I am good enough. Sometimes I am just sad. Not tonight. Tonight I am lost inside my head, but this time I don’t know why I am depressed or what I am thinking. My brain is on, but it’s drawing a blank. It’s running a million miles a minute. I want to get rid of the madness in my head, but I can’t. Nothing can fix what goes on in my brain. Not meds, not therapy, not friends, not family, nothing.

I don’t sleep well. I wake up two to three times a night and just stare blankly into space. I don’t blame my depression for it, but in a way I think it’s sitting in the back of my mind all day and night. It haunts me almost, like a scary dream, only it’s not a dream. This is reality. My reality is sitting inside of a crowded room full of happy people or sitting next to my boyfriend and being completely content with life, but at the same time, feeling so alone and not with the things around me. Sometimes I feel like everything is moving in slow motion around me while I’m hitting full speed, but I still can’t seem to catch up.

I hate when people ask me what is wrong because then I have to reply with, “Oh, nothing. Just tired.” Reality check. My version of tired is that my brain won’t shut off and it will not let my body physically get out of bed when I know that all I need to do to feel better is to just get up and go out and do something, but it just isn’t that simple. Or when I do get out of bed, leave my apartment, and interact with people, my mind and my thoughts from being out and socializing make me actually physically exhausted—even though I am only exhausted from interacting with other people. I hate that it takes me days to recover from a big social event and that after only a few hour from being out, I just want to hide by myself in my bed and shut the rest of the world out.

Living with this disease makes it hard to date. Guys don’t look at you the same when you finally decide to tell them that you have a mental illness that basically controls your life and every thought you make. It’s horrid because all you want to do is fall in love and be happy, but you can’t. It makes it almost nearly impossible, but when you finally get the urge to push past it and let someone in and fall in love, they hurt you and your depression sits in your brain and laughs at you for every single mistake you make and screams "I TOLD YOU SO!" inside your head, over and over again. Then you’re back to square one. Taking a million tries to love again.

This life I live scares me. Not like I’m going to die from it scares me, but scares me more in a way that I am not going to stop running from something that is latched onto my soul and will not let go. It’s a demon that is trapped inside you, only an exorcism won’t make it go away. Nothing will.

But at the end of the day, I go to sleep and face each day with a new beginning.