My Kingdom for a Sand Dollar

Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash

Attempting to outrun the inevitable is a horrible feeling. When you know there's no escaping it, when you know your efforts to mitigate the fallout will be laughable at best, how do you summon up the motivation to keep running anyway?

Is there even a point?

Now, I know I'm supposed to challenge my thinking. I'm probably supposed to point out to myself that I cannot predict what will happen. That simply because it has been inevitable in the past, doesn't mean it will be this time.

This time could be different, if only I could put in the requisite effort. That is what therapy seems to be telling me.

It's exhausting, holding onto hope like that. The urge to curl up and let the storm take over is far too strong, always. And that's how you end up fighting your instincts, your despair, and your depression, all at once.

Is failure surprising, in this scenario?

Depression feels inevitable to me - even more so when I'm in the absolute middle of a funk. Everything feels grey, and it's tunnel vision city. You can't see past the opacity of your gloom. You can't understand why you're miserable, when you have no reason to be miserable. You can't understand why you're wasting time and money when you have more important things to do. And you can't stop yourself from being miserable, no matter what you do.

Someone once recommended the game Depression Quest to me, simply because they knew I had depression. Perhaps they thought they were helping me. But if they had bothered to read anything at all about the game, they'd have known it isn't meant for people who have depression. It's meant for people who don't have it, to help them understand what it feels like. So that they might be more empathetic towards people who have depression in their lives.

Needless to say, the recommender did not get anymore empathetic. And the game itself became famous for other, more Gamergate-y reasons.

I think about this game from time to time, especially when I'm struggling to explain what I'm feeling. Especially when whoever I'm talking to isn't really understanding. I tell them - because I know no one's ever going to bother actually playing it - what the game is like. It features a series of choices in an ordinary life, but as the player's depression increases in severity, more and more of the choices get greyed out.

It may honestly be one of the most beautiful games I've ever come across, and I'll be forever thankful to Zoey Quinn for the thought that went into it. (And also for standing up to the assholes in the gaming community.)

Note: If you have depression, it is not recommended that you play the game, or at least not for very long, as it could worsen the depression. I've heard that some of the later choices get real dark, real fast.

When you have depression, snapping out of it is simply not an option. But you still have to try. Pushing back, over and over again, in some sort of fool's quest. Pushing back until you either do something right by accident, or fortune smiles upon you, or depression itself gets bored and wanders off. You may not even be able to figure out which one did the trick.

That doesn't sound very hopeful, I know. But I'm writing this because I'm pushing back, right now. Because I have been pushing back for 3 weeks now. Because it's really messing with my head, with my exams, with my work, and I'm hugely frustrated, and hugely angry at myself.

Because every time I get majorly depressed, I drop off the board. I lose track of all my projects, of everything I've been doing to pick up the pieces. And every time is a setback, in material terms.

Not this time. Please, not this time.