It's been awhile since I made a personal post - I've felt over the last little bit as though I've been a bother to people, always down and griping. I know that a lot of my friends who've never experienced anxiety and depression don't understand why I can't just cheer up, or look on the brighter side of things. Trust me, I know my mind is fucked, that I'm one foot off the board over the deep end and a complete emotional mess. I wish as much as you that I could just look up and see the sunny sky - sadly (literally), my brain doesn't work that way. When I'm down I have a hard time experiencing things that would normally bring me joy - seeing beauty makes me cry. I feel outside of the world, looking in through a dirty pane of glass. Other. It's a good way to describe how I've felt for a large part of my life. Just, other. Never quite fitting in. Never quite happy. Never quite sure what I want or who I am. Kind of broken, always, without glue. Trying to hold myself together.

I sat in the shower tonight, let the water wash over me, let the heat envelope me. I could feel myself drifting, there but not. Spacing in and out. I do that sometimes, drift away to somewhere else, staring blankly like my soul has fled and my shell is empty. It's usually a stress response, when I'm beyond what I can take and have nothing left and the only thing I can do is be away from myself and everything around me. Mentally, not physically. When I was younger it was in a book. I'd bury my nose in it and read for hours. People would call for me, yell my name - they wouldn't even register. It would take someone physically grabbing me , "didn't you hear me calling you?" No, no I didn't. I was lost somewhere else. I'd suck up those books like they were my life blood.

I don't read anymore. The anxiety and depression has stripped me of that too. My attention span is gone.

So is my ability to stay on topic, it seems. Back to the shower. As I sat there, the water rushing over my shoulders, and down my back, rivulets dripping from my hair down onto my legs - I felt other again. I wanted to be the water. The water of a lake under a sunny sky, calm and clear, rippled only by laughter and joy as people swam and played. Or the water of the ocean, overflowing with power, rolling up on the beach to steal away a sand castle, or crash up against the rocks in a fit of emotion and rage. Water has always held a special place in my heart. I feel it's call when I'm near it - a longing to stay, to enter and never leave. I remember walking down to the water front last fall, at night, sitting there with my feet just touching the edge of where the black water rippled. Music across the lake, and the moon shining down onto it. Peaceful. I wanted to stay there forever, and only left because it was too cold to stay out any longer. I find so much peace in the water.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. My head is filled with random thoughts lately. I walk a line between abject sadness and complete apathy. Motivating myself to do anything feels like it takes more energy than I have available to me. I wake up exhausted and already done with the day. I go through my tasks by rote: get up, open the blinds, feed the cat, get the cat water, put on clothes, eat as much mush with milk as I can before feeling pukey, give up on the breakfast, get some water, take my medication, brush my teeth, go to work. If it's a sad day, cry as I stare at the computer screen and wish that I could disappear. If it's not, stare at the computer blankly until a call or chat comes in and try desperately to come across as more human than robotic - and very often, fail.

And wish. Wish that I was either happy or gone. Happy or gone. Why can't I be happy or gone? That thought is omnipresent. I am so tired. Why do I need to keep doing this?