Shower

I spend so much time depressed that I don’t always notice the depression has taken hold.

Didn’t shower for a couple of months. Was I depressed the entire time, or had I simply grown accustomed to the lack of personal hygiene that depression affords?

I showered today. I hate the way the water feels on my skin. It’s too wet. Too hot. Too cold. I just want to be dry and clothed.

I certainly felt better after showering. Is the dark, cold, isolating depression over? Probably not.

Sometimes I can’t tell if there is anything between the soaring highs of mania and the standstill lows of depression, but a void chasm of nothingness.

Do I have a “normal self” anymore, or am I just acting out the character I think everyone remembers from before the madness began to cycle in with the depression. Was there a time before that? I certainly cannot remember.
And now, what is me, and what is the medicine? A line cannot be drawn. The pills that keep the madness mild and the depression dull, they don’t make me myself again, whoever that may have been. I am a shell of who I thought I was.

I now live in fear of losing all that isn’t already lost.