Please note that I have written this piece on a mix of hard days and easier days over the past while. It is true, but it is also written to process and explore. I am safe.
I really want more people to understand that depression and suicidality are a big part of struggling with and eating disorder, and many of the deaths that occur from eating disorders are due to suicide (not just medical instability)
If you are feeling unsafe, I hope there is a safe place you feel you can reach out to. If not, I am always happy to do what I can to refer you to resources or be a listening ear if that's what you need.
Take care while reading.
How do I explain high functioning depression other than to say I am sitting in the same clothes, staring at the same walls, seeing nothing.
In a few moments I will stand and make coffee. A book in hand, staring blankly, the words trying to find purchase on the still surface of my attention.
Later, I will be wherever it is I’m supposed to be; doing whatever it is I’m supposed to be doing. Productivity my disguise from the yawning expanse of emptiness before me. I busy myself at the edge, in the twilight hour, trying not to think of what comes next and the light slipping away from me. I’m told this is coping, I’m not really sure I know the difference between this and denial anymore.
The inevitable feels present like a dull ache that begs for attention: how long can one really look away?
That question wears heavy like a beaten track, a black pinprick of a stone pulling every thread of fabric into its depth - nothing reflected.
I have become skilled at tucking every corner with care, hiding the odd stain that leeches through behind ordinary excuse.
I have always been naturally dutiful - I wouldn’t know how to be anything else. A trait distilled through generations and reinforced by an endless onslaught of Capitalistic pressures. Shaping a Diamond or shattering glass? I no longer know the difference.
As a nurse, I have always wondered at those whose memories wear thin, leaving a threadbare surface of experience, while the very same person can retain a set of social skills that smooth over the gaps to cover first glance (sometimes even a second.) It takes a long stove burner left on or worse before anyone notices anything out of place.
I don’t believe that things just come out of nowhere, I know well enough what it is to have left yourself - door ajar, and not come back. To have wandered for days under the beating sun, cold to it.
People think of depression like a black cloud, but I know it as a bleached white desert - parched and blank. The air hums with static that wears through your skull, echoing in the empty halls of your being. The still eye of a storm so wide you learn to live in the blank expanse, held on the horizon of events unfolding in life around you.
It is a blessing and a curse to move so well through the motions. I am anchored by routines so familiar I no longer process them happening - the helpful and the harmful, though each has its purpose. I am absent in these times, I barely remember the unfolding of each thing as soon as it has passed - at least on a conscious level.
I still don’t know how there can be so much good and gratitude at the same time I am only aware of a longing to rest. I know these things can exist side by side, but the juxtaposition still seems incomprehensible. The good can exist, it is just that I have no emotional permanence when I am in this place, so much so that all seems lost even amongst the life I have built for myself out of lost opportunities and falling behind. I know more exists in a logical sense, I know I have come back to life before, but knowing is not the same as feeling and there is only so long one can survive off the scraps of logic and imagining.
I once read a poem supposedly written in a “madhouse.” Its author unknown, the words were nonsense, but held together in perfect metric. From afar it took a shape of purpose, a smooth and recognizable surface. But closer inspection revealed each crack - a disjointed assembly of pieces that held no meaning between them.
I know what it is to be such a thing, moving from one dissociated piece to the next, trying to thread meaning stitch by stitch. My hands are numb to it by now, though sometimes the thread does catch and even small things can bring us through.
I wish I could say - on this of all days - that depression was a hurdle I had long since climbed over. I wish my experiences of suicidality and mental illness were a neat and tidy narrative, something I could tell in the past tense, but my story is ongoing, ever unfolding in a myriad of ways, just as other areas of my life are.
I can’t say I’ve come through depression or suicidality and never looked back - it’s a cycle: waves that ebb and flow, a tide that rises and recedes, a pattern played out across the landscape of my life.
I can’t say I’ll never know what it is to want to end my life ever again, the truth is I already have carried those feelings on heavy days since my attempt in 2020. The truth is some days it’s hard to know how to go on and other days it’s not something I even think about.
What I can say is this, I am grateful for the moments, opportunities, experiences, and relationships I would otherwise not have gotten had my life ended on in the Spring of 2020.
What I can say is that there will still be ups and downs, maybe for the rest of my life, maybe not. But I am still here today trying to find out, surrounded by so much good even amidst what’s still challenging.
Everything exists all at once and I'm still trying to figure out how that can be true, but one heartbeat at a time, I am alive to do so.
- S.
As a reminder that depression or struggling doesn't necessarily look a certain way, these photos were taken a few days apart. One several days before my attempt; the other several days after, while recovering. I was extremely depressed in both of these photos.
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