Losing Battles

Black. Very black. The blackest of black. Thick ooze, like tar. Putrid.

It’s starts small, just a speck, but within hours it has consumed me to the point that I’m choking on it.

I feel it taking me over. I desperately try to stop it, but it is no use. Soon, it has consumed me. The black, thick, putrid, ooze devours me piece by piece and I slowly lose myself. I slip away. I know that as it eats me, it’s another part of me that I’m unable to save. Soon, it has completely consumed me. It has taken over every inch of me…emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually. I’m gone. I’ve gone into the dark abyss and there is no way to get out - as much as I desperately want to be saved. Someone…please…help me. Don’t let it take me this time. Please…please…please.

Too late…I’m gone. I’m in the abyss of darkness and who knows how long I will be there this time. I’m moving in slow motion - like trying to move through quicksand. My heart is heavy. So heavy. The weight in the middle of my chest is unbearable. Every time I take a breath, I have to keep myself from choking on the sadness that envelopes by body. The sadness is so deep and so thick. I’m drowning in it. I feel like I’m wearing thick, heavy winter clothes and trying to swim. With each stroke I take, I sink deeper and deeper. I’m drowning. Drowning in the sadness and black ooze, and I don’t have the energy to try to fight back and save myself. I just want it to take over and let me sink to the bottomless pit of the deep, black, cold, hole. Just let it take me. Let it engulf me. I have no desire to find my way back to the top. Just let me sink…I only hope that I sink far enough this time that I don’t ever have to float back to the top. I pray that this time I will get to the bottom and stay there. I’m exhausted, even though I have done nothing to fight back. My fighting would be in vain anyways. It has already won. It has already taken over and immobilized me. I’m frozen. All I can do is let it have me. Consume me. Devour me. Demolish me. I think of ways that I can burrow deep into the bottom of the hole so that I never have to make this journey again.

Depression.

If you have never experienced it, you have no way of understanding how destructive it is.

The medication helps me live a normal life the majority of the time. But the black, thick putrid ooze still has its victories. It’s a battle that I can’t seem to win.

A very close friend of mine gets so frustrated with me. “Fight!...just fight it this time. Don’t let it win this time Keri!” If it were only that easy. Oh, how I wish it was that easy.

When it sneaks in and steals my life away, I just want to escape from it…any way that I can. Anything to stop the overwhelming sadness that it brings. The sadness that I would rather die than face.

Will it always have a hold of me? Will I ever get to experience freedom from it?

I don’t know. I know I want to. I know that I would give anything to experience joy again. I know that I would do anything to stop it from greedily eating me alive. But until that day comes, I continue the battles. Hoping that even though I lose the battles, that some day I may win the war.