I might’ve worried a person or two with how I’ve acted in the past day or so.

The worst-kept secret in my world is that I suffer from depression. The cloud is always there looming, even when I don’t think I’m at a low. I don’t think there has ever been a picture taken of me where I don’t look at least a little sad.

I had really thought I was getting better. I’ve been seeing a therapist, I’ve tried to put some things and theories into motion, and things really had felt better. For a little bit, I really felt like a different person.

But lately, it’s been getting a lot worse.

I’m assuming the good feelings I had been getting out of therapy were just a honeymoon period. I hadn’t had anyone to go to for that type of help since I was a kid (and then, I wasn’t listened to as much as just pumped full of medication that turned my brain off). With every session, I felt a little more dull after each. It didn’t feel like this extreme emotional dump as it did me feeling like I have to come up with stuff to talk about to fill an hour. It’s not because I ran out of issues that I have. For whatever reason, it feels like if something comes up on that couch, it’s assumed to be fixed because I got it out of me and it’s not still looming over my head. The anxiety of having to think of new problems to justify the cost while the stuff that is right in front of my face is still haunting me - that’s horrifying. I place none of the blame on my therapist; this is all me. I can get stuff out easily, but revisiting makes me feel guilty that I couldn’t fix it when it got out.

About a month ago, I switched to a new work schedule that makes it practically impossible to get appointments in there. I have one coming up soon. However, it was a month between visits before that and it will be six weeks between this one and the next. That isn’t doing any good. I’m doing the right thing by supporting my household, but I get less help because of it.

That coincides with the past few weeks, which I can safely say have been the worst weeks of my sadness ever. My drive is at an all-time low. It’s not so much that I’m trying to claw and scratch my way away from the doldrums that I see in front of me, but that I’m just giving in because the fight is gone. I’m not maniacally screaming about self-termination or hopelessness. I’ve come to grips with things. I’m just kind of okay with not having any sort of faith in the future and I don’t really dread that my story probably won’t have a happy ending.

Realistically, I need to see an actual doctor and probably get on some sort of medication because the strength of what I feel or don’t feel doesn’t even seem trigger-based anymore. I’m sort of sad all of the time, and then some times out of nowhere, I get extremely sad. The extent of the sadness keeps going further and further down into whatever metaphorical well you would want to build. When I’m around other people, I feel like a stranger in a strange land because it’s extremely noticable that, even if they’re hiding something, that the methods that I feel aren’t how others who are chromosomally similar to me are able to process their emotions. Especially lately, I’ve felt practically like a different type of species because there’s no way I can be of the same tribe as anyone I know standing upright.



Then, we run into the issue of my insurance likely not covering the help I need and that my landlord probably needs the money from my paycheck more than a psychiatrist would.

I do struggle with whether I actually deserve the help. I am NOT a good person. I harness a lot of nasty intuition. I’m deeply jealous of every single person I know for what I do not have. I see myself as wasting life if I’m not either artistically fulfilled or making things better for someone else. The goals I want to achieve in life and the things I wish to do creatively aren’t do-able for me. I’m not talented enough, period. I’m not one of those people who can convince themselves that I’m a special little snowflake who can do anything. I know my limitations, and my limitations will keep me from ever making anything happen for myself beyond working forty hours a week behind a desk, doing mindless work that I have zero emotional attachment to. And you ask, “what about those people who have little talent, but all of the drive in the world to trick people?”. It’s a little difficult to find that drive when it’s hard to even get out of bed in the morning; and if I’m not capable of believing in myself, the mission to convince others to believe in me will always go incomplete.

The problem enlies when I’ve somehow found myself surrounded by people who have that talent and drive who are succeeding in fields I want to succeed in, and going places I’ve always wanted to go. I love these people, but my gross envy might as well be written across my forehead. I’m a terrible friend and a hideous person. Even people who are doing stuff I don’t want to or could never, ever do cause the giant of false desire to wrap his comforting arms around me. I have friends in bands who have done amazing things who I end up envious of, and I haven’t touched a guitar in almost twenty years. I have had the worst thoughts about the absolute best people and it’s just a thing I go through. If I deserved ANYTHING, I would be where these people are right now. I’m not. I’m desperate and I’m bitter towards people and things I can never be, but that have also never mistreated me for a moment. I have this cycle of envy-guilt-paranoia that is about the only thing I can count on in this moment on the second day of January in the year 2016. I don’t deserve fellowship whatsoever.

As for the other thing, making things better for others? I’m in no place to do that. In one realm of my life, I’ve been burned so hard lately that it’s not worth it to me to even put in the effort. Anything else though - I’m in no place to help anyone. I’m on the path of entering the foster parenting process, but I’ve had this eerie feeling that in the paperwork that we’ve submitted, something’s going to go wrong and it won’t happen. Then what? I’ve given the sacrifices of a family man without the end goal. I’ve given up a lot because I want to be a dad and selfishly, I don’t think I could live with myself if I squandered so much life for something that couldn’t happen.

To wander off-track for a reason, I was a troubled infant. I came from a druggie teen couple who couldn’t handle me. I was adopted by my grandma (I’d say grandparents, but the person I call “Dad” now didn’t want me and has said it to my face before). I didn’t talk until my life was almost a half-decade into its run. Doctors were perfectly fine deeming me as mentally handicapped and preparing my mom for a future of expensive schooling and lots of unfortunate work with me. But then I started talking out of nowhere, for absolutely no reason.. Everyone figured out in short order that I was perfectly fine on an intellectual level. From that point on, I lived a life of opportunities lost. I coasted my way through school, settled for an associate’s degree at a college that no one’s ever heard of, and took zero risks. I was given this incredible chance at life after the world had given up on me and I took it for granted.

That’s my struggle.

I’m thankful for the few who spoke up last night when I sent something out to the world that was a little too scary. While the words and the thoughts will never fix anything, the sentiment was very kind.



When the sun goes down, I stand alone with a one-person support system who will crumble if she has to fight for this alone like she is. But even then, she doesn’t live behind these eyes and only gets the results of all of the fights I have to fight by myself.



I’m a scared little boy who can never jump off of the cliff to do something great, while being a supposed grown man who regrets most of his life. These two halves of me are constant battle and everyone is losing the fight.

Everyone is losing the fight.