DEPRESSION

This is a journey with no joy.

It begins when you want to go out

But you can’t even get out of bed,

Even though the pillow is wringing wet

With the rivers of tears that you shed

In your night of weak sleep -
Your death without the commitment -

When, even in your exhaustion,

No dreams may come

Except the dreadful visions

Of living as a stranger

In this most alien of places.

There is injury on this journey

For something is broken

And cannot be fixed.

It’s not so much painful

As it is numb,

So deadened that you’re sick.

And yet, it’s not an illness

Because there’s no cure

That can make you whole

And save you from this seizure,

This cruel cancer of the soul.

There are waters on this journey

In which you are always

On the verge of drowning.

You sink away from the surfers

While others rise to the surface,

Where the distant sunlight dances

For swimmers granted second chances.

How can they break into the brightness

When you’re still under,

Not able to breathe,

Slowly suffocating?

You realise too late

That it was too small –

Your last air intake -

And so you’re stuck there,

Beneath the waves,

Where you sometimes see the sun’s glare,

But you can never feel its warmth.

Meanwhile that insidious sea

Crushes your lungs,

Murdering you from the inside out.

There are rooms on this journey -

Rooms full of people -

Where you alone are alone,

An acrobat balanced on nothingness,

Knowing what comes of nothing.

They lead normal lives,

With ordinary thoughts,

And you observe them

And covet their states of mind

As an outsider,

Speaking in a language forgotten,

Remembering a history forsaken,

And seeing ghosts in every doorway.

But there are other rooms on this journey –

Dark, like dungeons in a vast castle,

In which only you are imprisoned.

Four blank walls –

A gallery of naughts -

And only your thoughts

To amuse you

With their ridiculous refinement –

Symptoms of your madness,

Of self-imposed solitary confinement.

There are deep holes on this journey.

At times the path seems like little more

Than pits and ditches

Full of slime and grime,

Devoid of nature’s pictures.

So steep are the sides,

And so slippery,

There is no chance

Of climbing out.

When, and if,

You reach for help,

No one is there.

There is no colour on this journey

For everything is shaded grey

In your black and white world

Of monochrome infinity.

So all you see seems absent,

‘Though it never fades away.

There is a war on this journey,

One you fight every day.

Sometimes you win

And sometimes it feels

Like you’ll die.

But you stand up

And face this monstrous world,

With its Himalayan inhumanity

And its Amazons of indifference.

There is acting on this journey.

For you are afraid

To be the real you –

Because you’re not even sure

Of your own name any more.

So you paint your clown’s face

And disguise your sorrows

Because everyone knows

It’s really your fault,

It’s what they’ve been taught,

And they will remind you.

Criticism will always find you

While, in every queue

Sympathy is last-placed,

Never ever served,

Never ever deserved.

There is no future on this journey

For you have no focus

And you have no will.

You know you will never

Start anything.

And you know you will never

Finish anything.

It’s a waste of a life,

But you are too overwhelmed

To beat this killing sin,

And, anyway,

You don’t know how to begin.

Acknowledgement:  This poem was inspired by responses to an Instagram post in which I&I Outfitters (a clothing firm with an interest in anxiety, depression and mental health) asked people to describe how depression feels.