On The Days Depression Makes You Feel Nothing At All
I am adrift in a sea of hopelessness and emptiness. I feel paralyzed.
Natalia Lebedinskaia / Shutterstock Today is a blah day.
It isn't that there is anything terribly wrong today. There are issues looming, yes, but there are always issues of late. There is nothing pressing, though.
It is just a blah day, a day where I lay in bed, struggling to find a reason to get up. I've had to pee for a couple hours now. Yet, the dull ache in my bladder is not enough to pull me from under my covers.
I should probably brush my teeth. Maybe get dressed and get a bite to eat.
I have been awake for more than five hours now, even before the sun rose. Yet, here I still lay.
I feel blah. While the world around me continues with its hustle and bustle, I have no motivation, no desire to do anything. Nothing seems interesting or important. Nothing is pressing enough to pull me from this funk.
I would go back to sleep if I could, call in sick from life itself. I feel like nothing, not myself. I feel numb.
Days like this are common with depression. Those who have never struggled often assume that depression is all bouts of random sadness and tears.
Yes, I have those days, too, and it is draining when everything and anything feels heart-wrenching and makes me want to cry. Yet, even worse, perhaps, than the days when I feel everything too strongly are the days I feel nothing at all.
On these days, I have trouble pulling myself up or doing anything. I'm not being lazy, I just don't see the point. I am pulled into a gray abyss, where there's no purpose, no joy, no motivation, no will to live.
It isn't that I'm suicidal and actively want to die, either. I just have no will to live. The emptiness is all-consuming.
People suggest I should just "try" to be happy or to be positive. If only it were this simple.
Again and again, the "should be" and "could be" options roll around in my mind but I'm numb to them all. Deep down, I know I should be getting up, doing something, living life.
Yet, my brain has me in a deathlock. "What's the sense?" and "Why bother?" it parrots to me again and again. Its voice is booming and deafening. I can hear nothing else.
I would love to just smile, think a happy thought and have it vanish away like a puff of smoke, but it's solid and real to me. It takes the form of four solid walls, caging me in, holding me hostage, refusing to budge or listen to reason.
Those blah days are the worst because I feel trapped in this numbness. I cannot escape. I never know whether it will last one day or one week.
There is never an end in sight, never a scheduled sweet release.
Blah days drag on and on until at some point I begin to feel everything too strongly again. On blah days, I would welcome the tears, the anguish, the pain and the struggling just to feel anything at all.
It has been more than hours now, and I've barely managed to write a few paragraphs. Yet, those feel like a tremendous accomplishment. I call it a victory. I have done something, which is more than I am able to achieve on most blah days.
I still have to pee, though the dull ache has grown into a steady cramp. Breakfast time has come and gone, and lunch time has arrived. Yet, I still don't have any desire to eat anything, let alone get up.
There are calls I should make and things I should be doing. Yet, my depression still echoes in my head that I shouldn't bother, that nothing is worth the effort. It tells me to stay in bed, just let this day drift on by, that it doesn't matter.
Nothing matters. It is all I can hear. It is deafening. I am adrift in a sea of hopelessness and emptiness. I feel paralyzed.
I swear I am not being lazy, I'm just trapped in a battle with my own mind.
I feel lost and alone. I feel trapped in this emptiness. I feel nothing. I feel numb. I feel blah. This is what depression feels like.
B.L. Acker is a writer, artist, and author of "Unlovable: A Story of Abuse and Depression from Someone Drowning in the Abyss" and "Unbreakable: One Woman’s Journey to Deconstruct Dysfunction and Her Refusal to be Broken Any Longer." She writes primarily on topics of mental illness, suicide, and abuse.