Strange Faces: Part 12
Depression can affect people
in a lot of different ways. Some people try to hide it. Some will seek help.
Others will just give in. It just becomes too much to handle on their own. Of
course, there are resources out there for people like that, support groups and
such. But that would require an admission that something is wrong with you. And
that's a step too far for most.
There's a sort of social
stigma associated with depression. A kind of inherent shame that most people
experience. A feeling that, on some level, you're broken. You lose interest in
things, you can't sleep, you cry for no reason. It's a feeling of hopelessness.
A sense that everything is going wrong. Trying to explain that to people just
makes them think you're sad. But being sad when things go wrong is normal.
Depression is being sad when things are fine.
As for me, I try to hide it.
For as long as I can remember, I feel like I've been living two different
lives. In one life, I'm funny and fun to be with. I go out drinking and
partying with friends. I ask the occasional girl out on a date. Everything that
you would expect from someone normal. Because that's what I'm trying to be.
Normal. Or at least what I think normal is.
But my other life is
different. The life no one else sees is anything but normal. It's a constant
struggle to find a reason to get up every morning. To locate the motivation to
live for another day. Because there's no real joy in anything I do. Happiness,
to me, is a fable. An illusion. An urban myth, like bigfoot or the jersey
devil. It's something everyone talks about, but I've never seen. So I pretend.
I'm good at that. I practice my smile and slip on my mask and hope that no one
notices.
But it gets harder everyday.
And the harder it gets, the more I look for a way out. An exit from this life
that seems like a carnival ride from hell. So it seems that my current
situation would be ideal. Here's a way out that I never envisioned before, and
I wouldn't have to do anything other that submit. And it would be soooo easy.
Because to do it myself would be too hard. I know. I've tried.
They say that taking your
own life is the easy way out. That real courage is living your life. Well, I
disagree. To me, living is easy. All it takes is breath and time. Ending your
life, on the other hand, is the most difficult thing a person could do. To go
against every natural instinct in your body, to resist the innate programming
to survive, to watch as your own life slips away; that, to me, takes a certain
amount of courage that living does not.
But as close as I've come,
I'm still here. At least for the moment, since I was staring at a way out now,
that would take the decision out of my hands. So why am I fighting it? For the
simple reason that I don't like to lose.
Not that I win at every
thing I do. I don't. And I've never been the best at anything either. But I am
a bit competitive. And I'll keep playing until I win. It’s the only reason I’m still here. I remain perpetually afraid of the day I no
longer care about winning. What I lose
on that day will be more than a game. I
fear it will be my life.
But today is not that day.
