I couldn’t think of a title for this post, so there ya go.

The last month has been hard. My anti-depression meds seem to have lost their edge. Work has become remarkably stressful and at times degrading. I feel my emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical energy draining constantly.

I feel like I’m maddeningly thirsty all the time but nothing can quench my thirst. I feel dehydrated and depleted. Come to think of it, I feel now much like I did exactly one year ago.

Every morning I wake up sucking mud and by the end of the day I’m even more dehydrated than I was that morning. Every night I go to bed pretending the dirt sates my desperate thirst, and I hope with frailty that maybe I’ll discover a fresh well tomorrow.

I feel like there’s no end to this. I want to believe otherwise and I don’t feel ready to throw in the towel, but most days are dark. My wife’s and daughter’s love get me through them.

Most likely anyone reading this has heard of Robin Williams’ tragic death. His suicide pains me. I feel sorrow for him. I wish I could meet him, sit with him, and try to express how sorry I am that he had to face such a powerful demon as depression. I’m sorry it drove him to despair and suicide.

I wish I could tell Mr. Williams that I don’t think he should’ve or could’ve put on a happy face and silently allowed the demon to continue crushing him slowly. I hope he knows that he’s not alone and that so many people care and understand.

I read a blog post tonight that really hit home for me. Click here to read it. The author is genuine and open. Her words and experiences help me understand my own struggles. Whether or not you know depression first-hand (perhaps especially if you don’t), I invite you to read her post.

I’ll pass along a quote she shared. It helps me answer the question, “Why would a person end his own life?”

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.” 

David Foster Wallace