There are no words to describe how depression feels.
You want to say you’re sad, but really you're too numb to cry.
You’re empty, hollow – a shell with nothing inside.
Your food tasted better when you used to smoke than it does now; bland and flavourless – besides, you don’t eat because you’re hungry, you eat because you’re trying to fill that eternal vacancy that is never sated.
How can I be dead already? That’s what I am: the walking dead.
There is no desire, no hope.
Life cannot be defined by our physiological health.
Even a person in a coma has a heartbeat.
The eternal state of anhedonia knows no equal.
There is no anguish, no torment, no hellfire quite equal to that kind of emptiness.
Don’t forget to smile so no one thinks anything is wrong.
Don’t forget to fulfill your obligations so other people can enjoy what you’ve never known.
Wanting to die is necessary and sufficient to be declared insane.
Yet I can form sentences coherently, even eloquently if I desire; I know where I am, what day and year it is, who our prime minister and premier is; solve a simple quadratic equation if I had to, or even discuss the finer points of ontological epistemology or whether identity is intrinsic to existence or merely a construct of the social world, yet the simple desire to end this incessant madness, this descent into insanity is enough to get me locked up.
Why is the right to choose to live or die not considered the most basic, fundamental right for anyone?
Should not all freedoms start with this basic liberty?
Is it not the most arrogant, condescending position to look at another, fail to understand their torment yet refuse them absolution?
Are you really that cruel?
You would fly to my side, call an ambulance, or go to whatever lengths were necessary to ensure that I am protected from myself, and you would feel like you’ve done your part, but why do you not seek me out in my bedroom, when I’m hugging my pillow with shame and guilt?
Why do you not visit the lonely, the sick, the afflicted?
Why do your efforts come at that end rather than at the beginning or middle, when they might have made a real difference?
You call suicide a tragedy, yet you do nothing to interfere with the steps that lead to it.
You who look upon death as a tragedy could never understand those of us who look upon it as a reprieve, as a form of mercy.
Would you really deny me my final solution if there were no cure for this?
If I were condemned to the life of madness and anhedonia, would you force me to live it to the end?
How dare you.
How fucking dare you.
You sadistic piece of shit, you fucking bastard how dare you.
I don’t want to die, I just want the pain to end.
The throbbing, aching pain that never goes away.
Go ahead, put on a hundred-pound backpack and go on with your daily activities.
How far do you get?
That’s a good day.
Tape toilet paper tubes to your eyes so it’s all you can see out of, duct tape your fingers and hands, and tie your feet together so they can never be more than half a foot apart, and then try to function.
Don’t forget about the backpack.
The heavy backpack.
And then, when you’ve done all this, you still won’t understand, because you still care that these things, these burdens are upon you.
When you stop caring about your backpack, your toilet-paper-tube eyes, your duct-tape hands, and chained feet, then you will know.
You will truly know.
And not until then.
Oh God, please end this now.