E.P. Rains

When the sun goes down, the thoughts come out. Deep, dark, swirling thoughts that have been passed down from one generation of my family to the next. The weight of these thoughts pins my eyelids open. The later I stay awake, the more stressful it is to be a person with a beating heart and a brain. Tonight I feel overwhelmingly lonely. Last night I was feeling downright ugly. A few weeks ago I was feeling suffocated by adulthood. Without a formal diagnosis, I try to manage my symptoms by Googling them and ruminating on all the ways I can Improve myself.

The very long list of depression symptoms is as follows: anxiety, apathy, discontent, excessive sleepiness, insomnia, loss of interest and pleasure in activities, agitation, excessive crying, irritability, social isolation, thoughts of suicide, weight loss, weight gain, slowness of activities, mood swings, and most of all sadness. I check many of those boxes, especially feeling sad. Sadness is such an all-encompassing word for such an inexplicable feeling. It lacks the jagged teeth that scratch at my chest and the worn-out spots where I have rubbed over the same thoughts again and again.

Sadness feels like climbing a winding staircase with no visible beginning or end. You start walking, legs burning, up the stairs. As you climb, you slowly notice that the scenery never changes. One day is just like the next and the monotony of your life and the cogs grinding all day makes you feel insane. You look down and see no end in sight. You are working towards nothing.

Sadness feels like sitting alone in a room and convincing yourself that there are no windows and no door. You can’t imagine that anyone is sitting outside just waiting for you to emerge from your prison. You can’t hear the people pounding on the walls begging you to let them in. You can’t read the messages that say I love you because you’ve subconsciously gotten up and turned off the lights.

Sadness feels like leafing through a photo album filled with your worst memories. That time that you said something so scathing, and it was like your tongue no longer belonged to you. The time you embarrassed yourself so horribly that you were afraid to show your bright red face in public. The time that someone told you exactly what they thought of you, and you looked in the mirror and saw what they meant.

Sadness feels like watching a film with someone you love but it is the worst film you’ve ever seen in all your years on the planet. You want to shut it off, but then the person you love leans their head on your shoulder or takes your hand and you tell yourself you’ll wait five more minutes before you grab the remote. They snuggle closer and you promise to only think about grabbing the remote.

I read online that you should never trust your thoughts after 9:00 pm. The curtain on the day closes and late at night the set pieces are wheeled away, costumes shed, and face paint swirls down the drain. I imagine that at 9:01 your brain becomes inebriated on the elixir of life and begins narrating unreliably. My brain enjoys telling me lies like they’re dreadful bedtime stories.

You’re so annoying. You’re so fat. You’re all alone and no one cares about you. You’ve said so many stupid things that there’s no reason to put yourself out there. Your friends probably think you’re ridiculous. You’re overbearing. You’re clingy. You’re self-absorbed. You’re aloof. You’re ugly. You’re pathetic. You’re vain and conceited. You have no ambition. You never follow through on anything you start. You might as well be…

Alive. When my brain finally runs out of track to careen down, I come to the conclusion that I might as well be alive. Tomorrow I can get off the winding staircase, I can open the door, I can close the album, I can choose leave the film on. I don’t have to listen to the version of me nestled between my ears. She lies. I lie to myself thanks to an undiagnosed chemical imbalance. I should get that checked out.

Sadness is acknowledging that shit sucks sometimes. Sometimes you’re creating your own shit without realizing it and other times you’re stepping into shit created by someone else.

Regardless, it is way past our bedtime.