Finding Bottom

The hardest thing in the middle of a depressive episode is finding and knowing where the bottom of your depression is. You keep spiraling down, falling into the darkness of the well, maybe hoping to hit water where you can tread while you sort out the issues to see what, where and maybe why you feel so bad, but often knowing you will fall until you hit bottom, a dry well where you can sit surrounded by darkness not knowing anything beyond what you see and feel in the darkness, the light above long distant and out of sight.

So you fall, mentally in free fall, usually doing little if anything and mostly doing nothing you can remember later in the day and more so the next morning lying in bed asking yourself what you did the day before. In the darkness of the early morning you lie there wondering why you don't want to get up, let alone engage the day to be someone you know you are and want to be, and even the simpliest work is too much.

So you lie there where everything doesn't feel good but just feels enough where everything else doesn't matter. At least you can feel safe in the darkness and silence, the only sound you hear is your own mind thinking out loud and your heart pounding against the feelings of one simple fact. You don't like yourself anymore.

At least not for the moment and the moments surrounding it. But that only happens when you hit bottom. And you're not there yet. You're still falling in the darkness, not knowing anything else but falling, and hoping bottom will come soon. And as the morning light peeks over the eastern horizon and the darkness fades, you're still there, in bed, wondering and falling.