Setting a Date

I go through these periods of withdrawal, when all I can seem to do is stare at the wall or refresh internet pages.  Other times I just feel sick or exhausted or down in some other way that I can’t explain.  I don’t seem to care about anything anymore.  Today I began a journal entry: About a year from now, I will graduate from  college.  In a little over a year, I hope to be dead.  I have a plan, which is imperfect: I want to disappear without ever being found.  I want my family to think I’m somewhere, alive, so that they don’t suffer.  But I don’t want to be here, in the world, going through life.  The more I find out about the world and the people in it, about religion and government and starvation and prejudice and hatred, the more detached I want to be.  Is this what depression looks like?  Is it all chemical imbalance?   It can’t be all, can it?  It doesn’t feel like that’s all, but that’s how I think about most things — I used to think that I was immune to some things, like alcohol, until the first time I got drunk, and then the out-of-control feeling that came with it was the most surreal thing.  Chemicals are powerful.  It begs the question, can I be fixed?

But right now I feel like this thing is taking control of me.  I don’t know if it’s even me anymore.  I’ve lost my faith, I never had the ability to communicate.  I can’t concentrate, and it’s getting worse all the time.   How do you say to your family, “I need help,” or “I think I’m depressed,” or “I think I want to die?”  How could they believe me?   I don’t even know if I want the help.  Peace sounds better.