Before I begin, I want to make something absolutely clear: This is not a cry for help. I don’t want you to ask me if I am doing okay, nor am I interested your suggestions for how to miraculously turn around my life. This is hard enough as it is, without people trying to help.

I want to be honest, which means I need to let myself be vulnerable. And for that to happen, I need to feel safe, I need to know that I can tell the truth, and that nothing will be okay.

It’s come to my attention that I am in the midst of my annual summer depressive cycle. Were it not for a record of my musings over the past several years, I would most likely still believe that I was simply inexplicably exhausted. The depression which comes in the weeks leading up to my birthday is well known to me, but I always manage to forget the misery which the Summer Solstice delivers.

This isn’t about committing suicide. Ironically, I have my depression to thank for my continued existence. The same apathy which overwhelms me also keeps me from the meager stores of energy I have left which I might use to end this bloody nightmare I call life.

Would that I could but fade away, slowly disappear from the tapestry of reality, painlessly, without fanfare, without being remembered at all.

Painlessly.

I would so very much like the ending of my life to be entirely unlike the rest of it.

I wish that I could just go to the doctor, get my pills, and pretend to be regular folk again. Cut off everything that makes me me and just get by.

My wife and son would probably appreciate that.

But I can’t. Hell, I can barely even force myself to take a shower, I feel so overwhelmed and beaten down.

I feel so torn apart and raw inside that I cannot even find a way to cry.

I just want all of this to end. I don’t care how things will work out. I’m sure that everyone will carry on without me. Hell, they’ll probably do better without having to keep dragging me on.

I keep trying to find a reason.

They tell me to stay for the sake of my son. They tell me to stay for the sake of my wife. They tell me to stay because of countless reasons which don’t mean a damn when I’m amazed that I somehow managed to get out of bed.

When it gets this bad, I don’t even want to write. You know, that thing that I’ve dreamed of doing since I was seven years of age.

The only reason this exists is that I need to remember. I need to remember how this feels when I come out on the other side, for I’m not so daft as to believe that this will be the end.

During the cycle of mania, I am blissfully incapable of of viscerally feeling what it’s like to never want to be. That’s the time of whispered lies and inflated dreams of glory. Those are the moments when I feel like everything will be okay.

 

I wanted to write more, but it seems that the Bi-Polar Bears have seen me typing and are closing in on me.