The worst feeling in the world

It’s 2:30 pm, and I’m feeling okay. I’m spinning my wheels a bit, but I’m muddling through. I’ve had a reasonably productive morning, though I know I can get better. But, I’m working and I’m getting things done. 

Then…oh no. 

The sadness is coming back. 

Washing over me like a wave. 

Not again. Not again, not again, not again. What did I do to deserve a broken brain like this, one that cannot simply be happy like other people are? I do whatever I can to stop it. I take a walk with my music, trying to get some quiet alone time, but everywhere there are kids playing and people walking their dogs and cars pulling out of driveways. I eat some candy. That sort of helps, but it ruins my body. 

I become irritable and don’t want to talk to anyone. The despair crashes down on me, like a bottomless pit, and there is no exit. I try to explain how I feel to people, and they seem annoyed. Inconvenienced that they have to deal with me, offended that I cannot be fully present with them. I feel a profound sense of missing, of longing, of loneliness, of wanting to go and be somewhere else, of wishing to be held so tightly but also wishing to be alone. But, there is no one there for me. 

Eventually, I will start feeling better. It could be in 20 minutes. It could be in 2 years. I just never know. But one thing I do know is that the sadness and despair will always return. I have been dealing with this since middle school and it has never, ever stopped.

Living like this is exhausting, but what’s the solution? Take a bunch of sketchy medication that will reduce me to a shell of myself? No — absolutely not. I refuse. And as such, there is no help for me, it seems. I’ll just keep riding the waves, up and down, over and over again. Every little thing that goes wrong will cause me to snap, to get irritated, to have my barely contained emotions lash out. I seem to be unable to prevent this, though I try, because feeling the downward spiral begin is a horrible thing indeed. And yet it begins, over and over again, like a broken record consisting of nothing but screaming.