I know what you see. I’m lying in bed with the covers pulled up around me. It’s two o’clock in the afternoon, but here I am. “I think it’s time you get up,” I hear you say, and as much as I wish I could follow your suggestion, my limbs refuse to move. They feel heavy, like my blood stream turned to lead while I was sleeping. You’re not the only one yelling at me though. I can hear the anxiety that screams in my head, “Get up, you’re so lazy, you have so much to get done, and you’re just lying here!”
Somehow, my head manages to flop to the side, where, through barely opened eyes, I can see the piles of work that I haven’t touched laying on my desk, I can see how the rest of the room looks like a tornado passed through, ravaging everything in its path, and I can see you pleading with me to at least eat something.
There is nothing that I want more than to be able to do that.
It’s not that I want to lay in my bed and feel this way. It’s not that my bed is just so cozy, that I couldn’t bear to part with it. It’s that I have to lay in my bed until the inexplicable sadness that has washed over me has disappeared, even though I know it’s only gone for now. But at the same time, I want to get all of my work done and my room cleaned so that my head will finally stop screaming at me and telling me that I’m lazy and worthless; without understanding that it is dragging me deeper into the pit of depression. My depression and anxiety are fighting a war inside of my head, and it is never clear to me which side will win.
When my anxiety finally realizes that it is probably going to lose this war, it throws in its best effort. I start to remember all of the stupid words that have come out of my mouth, all of the times that I have tripped up the stairs in front of people and any other embarrassing memory that it can throw at me. This is where my depression works alongside my anxiety, keeping my limbs leaden so that I am forced to remember everything that my anxiety wants me to remember. It’s times like these where I wonder if my anxiety and depression are secretly scheming together to make me even more miserable than when this all started. If they are, then they’re doing a good job.
I wish more than anything that my mind and body would get along. I wish that I wasn’t always so sad and that I actually felt like doing something. I hate that feeling like this has diminished the value of my friendship because I can’t keep it together long enough to actually leave my house sometimes.
There is no reason. Sometimes, I’m just sad and I really don’t know why. Sometimes, I’m so anxious that I feel sick, and, again, I don’t know why. I wish that I could keep it together. I wish that I wasn’t this way, but I am. And the best that I can do is take it day by day.
