The Struggle to Find a Reason

I am constantly engaged in a war that demands everything I've got just in order to survive. A war against Depression. And I know that the only outcome will either be that I survive until I die, or that it kills me first. Often times it seems easier to just give up, to surrender. And so I search for reasons to not do so. I burn through them like a gas guzzler, and once a reason is used it might never work again; because this enemy is one that learns and adapts and fights back. I look under every stone, in every bush, down every rabbit hole, along each river, between each known location, and through any microscope, for a reason - for ANY reason - to persevere for a bit longer. Maybe it's that we'll be eating something I love for dinner tomorrow. Or I need to reach the next level in a video game. A friend wants to show me a movie they love. Maybe someone made me promise to at least try to take care of myself. Or I want to see one more full moon.

If you can find even ONE thing that you MUST do, it can save your life.

Or if you want to leave everything behind because of stress. Perhaps thinking about how, in the grand scheme of things whatever it is doesn't matter that much, might help. But be careful with that one, for while it may help with stress it can also make you feel as though YOU don't matter. And like the Doctor said:

But also, the dark side fights back. It doesn't want to survive. And so it will fight just as hard as the part that wants to live. Unless I can defeat it, or at least shut it up for a while. And so far... well... I haven't had much success.

In fact.

It's finding other ways to get me. Instead of telling me to die, it just quiets the voice that tells me to live. I don't sleep, or eat, or take care of myself properly. At all. It's the kind of thing where you stop watching where you're going, you don't ask people to hang out, you don't eat or drink enough, or sleep well, you stop dressing warmly when it's cold and vice versa, you lose track of the days and months even, you don't take your medication. It doesn't look like suicide and that's why it can hide until it has festered into an enormous beast that drags you around by the chain you tried to tie it with.

And that's what I'm fighting against. The monsters that were born, and grew, and trained.

But perhaps the hardest part...

Is that...

The monsters are ME