P o e t r y Book

„How does depression feel like?"

It's hard to explain how depression feels like. Because you don't really feel anything. You're not necessarily sad. Not angry, certainly not happy. Happiness seems like a faint, blurry memory from of another life. Like an emotion that only exists in stories. But not in reality. All of your emotions are kind of numbed. Like taking too many painkillers. You're indifferent to absolutely everything. Imagine how hard it is to make any decisions when you are indifferent to everything. It feels impossible. And frustratingly stressful. When you can't decide which socks to put on. Or what to eat. Or where else to go. So you just end up laying on the couch. Staring at nothing, doing nothing but breathing. For hours. For days. Nothing matters. Your life seems pointless. You're convinced that this will last forever. You occasionally wonder why you should continue to live. You hate your life, hate yourself and everything about you. You hate your way of thinking and the state that you're in. You hate this depression. But you can't express it, because you don't have the energy, so you just blink at the back of the couch with an expressionless face, while a tear slowly runs into the corner of your mouth.

You want it to end. But you can't move. You want help, but still know you can't be helped. So you just give up on everything. All the plans you had for your future. Your hobbies that don't give you joy anymore. The contact with other humans because what's the point if you don't have enough energy for speech. You give up all the hope you ever had for yourself, and just continue to lay motionless on the couch. Your whole body is tingling from numbness, your breath is flat from this undefined weight that's pressing down on your chest, so heavily that it feels like it's pressing on your heart and squeezing out all the blood from it, making you die a slow and lonely death. Another tear in your mouth. You think by now you must be dried out inside from all the salt. But the water on the table is a journey away. And what's the point anyways, if you're dead inside already.

That's depression. Nothing chill about it.