The Monster

I wonder whether anyone has considered that depression might very well be a monster that eats at your very soul, the substance of who you are, until you are nothing more than a shell. So hollowed out that were someone to place a candle inside you, the glow would shine out through your thin covering. Or, conversely, so that the world can see when your light no longer shines.

Mine certainly has been snuffed out by darkness creeping throughout my mind. How else to describe the insidious tentacles of depression that burrow into my thoughts, my personality, everything that makes me Me. It poisons every thought, every moment. Driving down the road becomes a question of whether you could just keep driving and escape. Thoughts of escape turn to the realization that it would be an escape for your family as well, because surely they deserve so much better than I can offer. I've tried for years to get out from under this monster, and it just goes nowhere. It sits there, waiting for negativity on which to feed. Something to make it grow bigger until it can eclipse my very being. Any negative thought will do.

Usually my combination of faith and an antidepressant successfully combat the darkness. But I've been without the medicine for a couple of days now, and I feel so miserably faulty in every aspect of my life that I think surely God must have turned His back to avoid seeing how awful I am. It's hard to accept that anyone could love me as much as He says He does. Let alone accepting that my husband might actually love me despite my depression, my impatience, my need to be alone, my tendency to spend money when I am lost.

I just feel a right failure. If I'm honest, I guess I always have. I can't be perfect. But somehow that knowledge does not permeate deeply enough to prevent me from feeling like a failure in everything in life because I am not perfect at it all. If I can't do it perfectly, then I am a sham at everything. Being a perfectionist has made me a great attorney, I think, but a miserable everything else.

It's just at times like this that I can't see a way out.