Little Things

          The toughest part (I think) about having depression is all the little things that normal people do. Things like brushing your teeth, drinking water, taking a shower, regular self care things. It's very easy to think: who cares if I don't brush my hair? Cavemen didn't brush their hair, and they didn't die from that. All these little things lead to a very unhealthy lifestyle that I'm fully aware about.

          For me, every little task leads to overthinking. What I do to get myself productive (or as productive as I can be anyway) is to break things down into manageable chunks. For example instead of waking up and thinking, ok, let's go to school. I think: ok, get dressed. Then do your hair. Then do your makeup. Then pack your bag. Then wear your shoes. Then get out the door, etc. For the most part it is helpful but for tasks that are already small, like taking a shower, I break it down to steps like: get the towel, get the shower supplies, check if anyone is in the bathroom, wait for people to leave the bathroom, get in the bathroom and hope nobody knocks on the door, shower and hope there are no bugs or lizards to accidentally crawl on me, etc. This makes a small task super daunting. What if when I go to the bathroom a housemate sees me and starts talking to me? What if when I'm showering somebody really needs to poop and they're knocking on the door non stop? What if someone's washing their clothes and the water is trickling and way too hot? What if? And all these things lead to me sitting there and being weighed down thinking: Is it even worth the effort? Do I care that I showered? Isn't this just for other people's benefit? What's the point?

          What's the point. That's the foundation of depression isn't it? Why do we do anything? Everyone dies in the end, whether you're a super successful philanthropic millionaire or a leech, everyone dies and nothing matters. What's the point of going to school? Getting a job? Being successful? Meeting people? Falling in love? In the grand scheme of things what would it affect?

          There's no point in trying to convince me of the wonders of life either, I know logically that all these things leads to a state of happiness. It just doesn't motivate me. I don't care that doing these things will make me a happier person, because the process of doing them is making me want to not exist. To me, doing nothing causes the least amount of stress and sadness, and if that's the point of living, why would I actively do things that make me feel worse?

          All in all, it's a disease. No amount of talking about it will cure me. I need professional help, I'm aware, but again... help means money and money means work, work means people and work means effort. Effort means wanting to be dead. I interned for 2 months, I wanted to die. So that's that. It's awful, but it is real. I downplay it because I think I'm a wuss for feeling this way. It's getting worse and worse, and I know it. Last month I entertained the thought of suicide and I could see why people do it. I never thought that before, I used to think there was no reason for suicide. I only hope to delay the decline long enough for me to get real help.

          There's no need to worry about me, sadly it is an internal struggle. You could shower me with all the encouragement in the world and it will just sit on top of my brain, never sinking in. I just hope people will understand, that I'm not trying to do this, it is actually really, really hard just keeping myself alive, and everything else is a blizzard on top of an earthquake.