Flirting with Darkness

I am prone to depression. Ever since adolescence it has lurked beneath the surface. The darkest times are punctuated not only with lethargy, lack of interest or unhappiness. I’ve lost chunks of time, being unable to recall days, events, anything. Times punctuated with inability to feel any emotion, just absolute nothingness. I’ve missed weeks of my undergrad studies because I could not get out of bed. I’ve been sick because I could not care to eat. I’ve stared at knives wondering what it would feel like, stared at bottles of pain medication for hours wondering what it would really be like to die–the furthest I ever got was four pills before I realised what I was doing–I’ve craved alcohol just so that I would feel something, anything resembling emotion.

On the way out of a spell of depression I am hit by a creative energy that I love. My mind is filled with ideas, words and thoughts come pouring out. it is there I find my words, my words that are so important to me. Because of this, my depression can be quite seductive. Each spell that I survive gives me more strength, more control. With each passing I have more to say, more to feel. Every scream that I emit during my apathetic phase become lines filled with emotion, desire, feeling.

I can usually feel a spell trying to push itself to the surface. I feel it brewing, rolling in like a storm. It doesn’t always win and when it does, it comes with vastly varying degrees of potency and duration. Sometimes I can smile and be myself while I battle the darkness and sometimes it completely consumes and there is no pretending. There are times when I can stave it off and it’s satisfying when I feel it ebbing  away and I know that I have won. There are other times when there is nothing I can do to prevent its presence and then there are other times when I flirt with the darkness, when I beckon it to come and do its worst because I know I will be coming out the other side. The power, the relief it brings when the spell is broken is almost addictive.

To many of those who know me, these words would seem very much out-of-place. My friends would not describe me as depressed, as sad or unhappy and honestly neither would I. I smile easily, I make my friends laugh and I have healthy self-esteem and feelings of self-worth. This darkness is just one facet of me. It ebbs and flows with no consistency, it just is. But it does not define me, at least not all of me and not completely.

My blog address has the word mystique for a reason. There are many sides to me that I keep quite close to the chest. There are so few who know it all. My contradictions, my convictions, my highs, my lows, my dreams, my fears. Sometimes I am a mystery to myself. I share these words here because I was brought up inadvertently to feel that depression was not a legitimate issue, that it was laziness or some other negative attribute, but now I know better and I believe that I can say what I struggle with, caring not about being judged, but just being sure that the people who matter to me, know the real me. So many things make me who I am and my struggle with depression is one of those things and it is something that will never beat me because I will never allow it to.