“Breathe into my hands”

The days are made up of small moments. Today’s best moments come when I walk into the other room and the sun falls on my face. The worst moments come when I climb back into bed, moaning from the pain. Some moments are lighter: they’re surreal, empty, clouded, but the depression has lifted just slightly. Others are agony, like fresh knife wounds… some are in between. It’s a mess of drowning and rising, but never quite breathing.

Derealisation has been on my mind a lot. Because of a couple of clearer moments I’ve had recently, I’ve convinced myself that it’s possible for the cloak over reality to be lifted. Yet there are so many hopeless moments. I try not to drown in them. I’m gaining more control over my thoughts, but I desperately need to see more improvements. I started meditating more often and I signed up for MoodGYM to practice more techniques to try to get my head on straight. I don’t know if it’s because depression is fighting the improvements or just that the worse times seem darker to me now… but there are so many sudden, excruciating moments where I want nothing more than to die. Even in one small moment, I can feel a burning desire to try a certain method, to end things, to find relief… or I’m so lonely or worried about someone that I’m driven to despair in a second.

I can’t afford to think too much about the past or the future. If I did I’d struggle much more in moving forward. But even in this moment, the loneliness is almost too painful to bear. The pain of depression runs through every part of my conscious mind. Often it’s more vague now… which is a relief. It’s often milder. But it doesn’t stop me dreaming of resurfacing into the world… or drowning until it ends.

I’m taking each moment as it comes. If, one day, I feel alive in this very moment, then I’ll be close to where I want to be. For now I’m just falling and rising… waiting to breathe again. There’s a song I found and loved when I was 15, which goes:

Are you still breathing?

Breathe into my hands; I’ll cup them like a glass to drink from.

That was when I fell into a kind of death inside, worse than any depression I’d experienced before. I haven’t risen since. I would love to look out at the world and really see it; stop retreating into myself and help others breathe. Hopefully now is the time that the ‘how’ will start to coalesce with ‘when’… but it’s hard to believe in the worse moments. Sometimes, although I know this is something I can only do on my own, I wish there was a hand close enough to touch… someone to fight for. When I told my ex I’d made my mind up to leave, he said, ‘then there’s no reason for me to get better.’ I know it was only a temporary conviction, but I understand the feeling well. I hadn’t been relying on him for a long time and I don’t want to change anything except the pain I caused, but sometimes having a living, breathing hope and reason to fight is all you need. I know in reality it isn’t the ideal time to rely on someone or have someone relying on me, but loneliness can eat you up inside.

I don’t know right now which is coming… the end or the beginning. The moments are so changeable. I don’t know what I want. I just want something. I want to tear the pain away. I want to breathe.