Hello Darkness, my old friend

My depression is in full-swing currently. It's misery every day lately. It's not just bc of Guy, although the breakup did initiate this period of depression. It's everything. I realized yesterday that if I could start over at 18, I would redo every major decision I've ever made in my life. I would choose differently every single time. That realization has made me feel even more depressed, bc it means my entire adult life has been a waste. I wouldn't go to law school. I wouldn't be a lawyer. I wouldn't date or marry YKW. I wouldn't date Guy, either in college or this time around. I wouldn't have moved out to the sticks. I wouldn't have taken a job out in the sticks. Literally every single major decision I've made, I would redo it by not doing it at all. Everything I thought would happen, everything I wanted my life to be, it hasn't worked out bc all the decisions I've made were wrong.

My life feels useless right now. I feel like my entire existence is pointless presently. Objectively, I know it's not true. I can remove myself enough from the emotional wreck that I am to look at things objectively & realize that objectively, there are things I do that matter & people who care about me. But logically knowing that & feeling that are two separate things. I do not feel like that, no matter how much I may objectively be able to know that. And it's the feeling that's killing me.

I've read somewhere that depression feels like drowning but seeing everyone else breathe. But that's not been my experience. For me, it's like slowly have your air supply cut off, rather than the abrupt suffocation of drowning. It's like being in a room where the air is slowly running out, a little bit at a time, so that it takes awhile for the suffocation to occur. So that you have time to really feel it creeping up on you, really feel it leeching away your ability to keep going. It's not a fast thing, but a painstakingly slow & drawn out thing. And as it happens, you know it's happening & it feels like there's nothing that can be done about it. So you either resign yourself to your fate of slow suffocation or, in some cases, you speed up the process & end things. That's not my option, but I certainly struggle with the first option, simply resigning myself to my fate, accepting that things will never get any better, believing that it will always feel like this. It's hard not to, bc that's what the slow suffocation does--it chips away at your strength, a little at a time. If it were drowning, you'd fight furiously to save yourself. But when it's slow & insidious, it's harder to fight. It's already gotten a hold of you by the time you realize it and it's already stolen away pieces of your strength.

So that's where I am at right now. Struggling against the slow suffocation that is my depression. Feeling like it's hopeless, feeling like my efforts will be pointless. Feeling like I am resigned to my fate. It's a bleak place bc it feels like it will never change. Even if I can objectively tell myself that it eventually will. It's the feeling that's hard to overcome.