Writing My Way Out of Depression

I've been in a bit of a funk lately, so I'm going to take the advice left here on this blog for me, and try writing my way out of it. This was my day yesterday:

There is no peace in my mind. Nothing eases the heavy brown smog that clogs every crevice of my life. When I wake, I'm overwhelmed with the sense that my heart just stopped, because there is no reason for it to continue beating. I gasp for air as consciousness stabs my brain, sucking in the musty gloom that I long to escape when I sleep. I lay in bed exhausted, tired of searching for a reason to get up every morning and finding none. Finally, getting up, because I have to, I pray for something to spark the tiniest shred of motivation within me, so that the day will be bearable.

I try to eat breakfast. Nothing tastes good. I force it down anyway, knowing my depression will get worse if I don't. I turn on the computer to post a poem I wrote the other day, but I'm tired, and don't feel like typing it. I decide to work on a picture to go with it, instead. I spend hours on it, but it doesn't excite me, and neither does the poem, anymore. I'm suddenly struck with the realization that my entire life has been a waste of time. "That's not true!" I argue with myself, but all my accomplishments seem pitiful at the moment, so I lay down to take a nap.

Again, I wake gasping for air, sucking in the "hopeless tape" that automatically starts playing before reality can slap me to my senses. "Stop!" Ok, focus on the feeling and where I feel it physically. The feeling dissipates, but not the thick brown gloom that accompanies it, or the exhaustion. There's only a vague memory of that sinking feeling you get when your heart skips a beat. Affirmations. I need to think of my affirmations quickly. Courage, insight, strength, determination... I go through my list, but they sound ludicrous. For some reason that I can't fathom, tying a plastic bag over my head seems more plausible than any of these affirmations, so I decide to escape into a daydream, where I make it past this phase of my life and go on to accomplish all the things I would like to do with my life. When all else fails, daydreaming keeps me from doing something stupid.

The hours pass like minutes. It's late night, and I've accomplished nothing today. The daydream makes the real world appear dreary, and the real world makes the daydream appear impossible. My vision is severely distorted by brown smog, and I'm too tired to fight it. But, I've survived the day, and tomorrow's another day.

The last line was my positive thing for the day, and my gratitude list. I did better today. Work helped get me through. My gratitude list for today:

I survived another day.
My work is not overwhelming.
I wrote this.
I found this picture that I did a while ago and forgot about, but seems to fit.