Monday, February 9, 2015

Sadness is Like a Blanket

Sometimes sadness approaches you like a soft blanket. It drapes itself across your shoulders, enveloping you in thick wool. It's soft and comfortable for a while, and you're content to curl up under your blanket and rest for a while. But then you start to get a bit hot. You're already wearing sweatpants and a sweater, and the blanket feels like it's starting to suffocate you. Your cheeks turn pink, you feel itchy and uncomfortable, and when you try to pull the blanket off of you, it just gets more tangled around your body. The more you struggle, the tighter it gets. So you just decide to live with it for a while. It's a bit heavy, and it drags on the ground as you walk, but you think you can deal with it.
It's alright at first, but you realize that you're living a bit differently with you blanket on you. You have to stop and rest after doing certain activities because the blanket is weighing down on you, making tasks a bit more tedious and slow. You trip over it as you walk, and eventually mud sticks to the bottom of the blanket, adding more weight to your shoulders. But you keep going, because the blanket is just too difficult to take off.
Soon you feel like people are starting to notice your blanket, notice how you're taking more time to rest and struggling with easy tasks. So now you're starting to become ashamed about the blanket draped around your shoulders, and you begin avoiding things you used to enjoy. You make less and less trips to the grocery store, you start missing school or work, and when your friends invite you out, you decline, too ashamed that they may find out about your blanket, and scared of what it might make you do.
Eventually, your outings become few and far between, and your friends stop asking you to spend time with them. You burrow yourself in your home, surviving off crackers and canned soup. You're feeling more and more miserable every day, and all because of this darn blanket. Now your family members are starting to worry about you. They tell you that they don't see a blanket, and they don't understand why you just can't get over it. You try and explain that this blanket is extremely heavy, hot, and impossible to take off. They tell you that you're just making up excuses. You try to tell them that this blanket is ruining your life, but they just tell you that they have blankets too, and they don't have a problem with taking them off. Soon you stop trying to explain, and they stop trying to help you.
Now your blanket is heavier than ever. You remember when it was light and fluffy, and you were perfectly content to curl up under it. But now it's not soft or warm anymore. It's ripped and covered in dirt, crusted mud, and pointy little objects. The corners have frayed so much that they scrape your skin when you touch them. You can't even stand to look at your blanket, it makes you so upset. But every time you try to take the blanket off, it just twists itself around your torso and refuses to budge.
By now, all you can think about is this blanket. How ugly it is, how much it's ruining your life--this blanket is taking up your every walking moment. Soon you can't find the motivation to leave your room, and you start forgetting how to function normally. You either forget to eat or gorge yourself, and you always forget to shower, because it soaks your blanket and makes everything so much more difficult.
You've started blaming yourself for this blanket, despising yourself for letting it get this far. You fantasize about burning the blanket, and letting the flames surround you and destroy you as well. Everything you do seems to take an enormous amount of effort. Even sitting up is difficult. You just lay in bed, unable to talk, unable to move, just crying into this awful blanket that you just can't get rid of. Life doesn't have much meaning anymore, and all because of a stupid blanket.
 
 Now that's more depression than sadness, but you get the point. We've been having a lot of snow days lately, and they're not doing good things for my depression. I'm trapped inside my house, and I feel so inexplicitly miserable. Everything sets me off, and I can't figure out why. I make my family members upset, and I feel absolutely terrible about myself. Today I spent far too long in my bed, either sleeping or crying, depending on whether or not I was awake. I cannot wait for this day to be over, so I can get to school and do something. I'm hoping that this bout of bad depression is unique to these past few days, but I'm not too sure. Depression is something that's always there, but for me it has dormant periods where it doesn't ruin my life. I'm hoping the dormant period continues

No comments:

Post a Comment