play without asking again.

**Trigger warning: depression, suicidal thoughts, existential dread…just some super dark shit. Please stop reading if you feel these topics may harm your well-being.**

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“How did you go bankrupt?”
“Two ways. Gradually…then suddenly.”
– Ernest Hemingway | The Sun Also Rises

It went like this: one day I was living a healthy, present, predominantly joyful existence. Then, in a blink, I woke to find myself curled up in a ball on my couch – overweight and disheveled and paralyzed by some sort of unnameable dread, surrounded by discarded fast-food trash and empty boxes of cigarettes, wondering how in the actual fuck I got there.

At least it felt like a blink. It wasn’t. Approximately four years stretched between those two realities. The thing about descending into madness, at least in my experience, is it happens gradually…in fits-and-starts. You’re aware of it, kind of, but you’re also clinging to the memory of better days and holes-you’ve-climbed-out-of-before. Sometimes you’ll experience several days (or weeks!) of being mostly-okay and you’ll convince yourself it’s over now, thank god. But then something (or nothing) happens and back down you’ll go – to the place where operating as a human being feels fucking impossible. Trudging along the floor of that place, it seemed I was only capable of collapsing inward: of binging mindless shows on Netflix, stroking the dopamine receptors in my brain with junk food, and sleeping longer than most folks would believe humanly possible.

I began to wonder if perhaps that swirling, desperate black hole was simply going to be my life. I wondered if I’d ever be able to sustain something resembling a normal existence. And if not, did I really want to stick around for it?

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I suspect I’m not alone in being unable to remember which domino fell first during my mental / physical / emotional health decline. Maybe it was shaving my legs…or taking the garbage out as soon as the bag was full. Maybe it was the first time I abandoned efforts to stave off symptom-Googling compulsions and lost myself down days-long rabbit holes of horrific health anxiety. Or maybe I just smoked a cig and ate a candy bar one day in 2019 and decided, ‘fuck it, I’m all in on nicotine and sugar.’ Whatever that first slightly-angled step off the *straight and narrow* was…I didn’t look back until I was so far off the fucking path I couldn’t even see it anymore. Somehow I’d wound up deeply lost in a vast hell-scape of fear and gloom.

It’s worth noting those bizarre, largely-dark four years were not entirely dark. A stats lover from way back, I tend to imagine a basic scatter-plot graph when reflecting on this period in my life. Time (variable one) runs along the horizontal axis, while ‘Joy,Contentment,Peace,Happiness,Etc.’ (variable two) comprises the vertical axis, and each day represents a new plot point. The chart, overall, trends down across time. But that doesn’t mean there weren’t incredibly joyful moments, days, weeks…super-high plot points, scattered between 2019 and early-2023.

I imagine that very phenomena is part of the reason we’re so often shocked when someone decides to end their life. In the midst of my prolonged-depression I seemed okay, if not mostly-happy to most people. Those were high-level plot-point moments: around others, out in the world, on vacations or dates or family hangs. I could still absolutely fucking crush a work presentation. Or make the most amazing memories with my nephews. Or fall in love with a man and carry on an entire long-distance relationship. But at home…alone…with my spinning thoughts and bone-deep anxiety and existential dread and life-sucking habits, I was beaten bloody. Exhausted. Dying.

My god I want so much to be able to wrap myself around that exhausted, suffering past-me while she sleeps for fear and dread of being awake. I’d hold her hurting body in my arms. I’d tell her she’s loved; she’s not a burden. I’d tell her she’s already forgiven.

I can’t, of course. Time doesn’t work that way. Depression doesn’t work that way.

To get from where she was to where I am now, she still has a few more miles through which to trudge…new depths of despair to reach. She’ll never entirely give up or lose hope in a better life – something unknowable won’t allow it. She’ll continue attending therapy sessions she hates and adjusting medications she wishes she didn’t have to fucking take. She’ll keep going…the smoke will clear.

But before then, on New Year’s Day 2023, she’ll once again awake to find herself curled up in a ball on the couch. She’s the heaviest and least healthy she’s been since the end of her drinking days. She cannot see the surface of her coffee table – every square inch is covered in garbage…it spills on to the floor. Her Christmas decorations won’t come down for another six months. The prospect of the New Year brings her to tears: another year gone, nothing got better. She kicks a path through the fast food bags and discarded mess on her way to the kitchen. She opens the fridge – empty, save for a large collection of sugary beverages, grabs a can of Coke and heads toward the sliding glass door that leads to her third-floor apartment balcony. Cracking the door, she pulls an American Spirit from the pack, brings it to her lips, lights it, inhales. During her nap, the Netflix show she’d been binging in an effort to numb her brain has timed out.

So much goddamn wreckage. ‘How can I possibly begin to dig myself out of this?’

It’s too heavy – too much to contemplate or sort through. And she just doesn’t have the energy to care right now.

Cigarette in hand, she finds the remote and, because she can’t bring herself to do anything else, despondently clicks: Play without asking again.

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If you or someone you know if struggling with suicidal thoughts or ideation, reach out now. If you’re in the US, call or text: 988 or visit: https://988lifeline.org/.
YOU ARE LOVED. JUST KEEP GOING.