On depression.

I feel like the pathetic definition of a first world problem today. I’m leaving for Paris tonight, I’m getting a week off of work with no conflicts, I have money saved up to pay for everything while my mother and I are there, and yet, I’ve been burdened with immeasurable sadness and crippling anxiety for the last four days.

Morgan left for Russia on Wednesday morning and I’ve been heartbroken over his absence since the day before the flight, and it seems my anxiety has only mounted since then. I feel deeply lonely in a way I haven’t in a long time. Mishka is picking up on the fact that not only am I not feeling right, but I’m also leaving for a week. I had to hand-feed him his breakfast this morning because he was too depressed to muster an appetite.

The weather has been hot all week, punctuated with moody thunderstorms — my favourite kind of climate — and I can’t even smile about that. I go outside to sit in the sun to conjure up some vitamin D, some recourse for my depression, and it doesn’t help. I print images to start a new drawing in the studio and once I’m done printing my references, I lose the will to climb the stairs to the attic and begin work.

I had a nightmare about D the day Morgan left. I didn’t realise how much I unconsciously view him as my protector until this nightmare occurred in the wake of his leaving the country. In the dream, there was some kind of party taking place at my home, and it was evening. I turned and D was climbing the stairs to where I stood. I yelled at him, pushed him, tried to make him leave. The dogs were not around for some reason. I understood that D had fooled my parents into trusting him, and was now standing in front of me, half in denial, half in mocking condescension, and told me it was inevitable that we would get back together. What did I ever do to you? he asked me, and in the dream, I couldn’t remember my list of grievances, only my anger and my intense fear. I woke with my heart pounding out of my chest. It took me an hour to come out of my dream-state, even as I walked around the house and interacted with my parents and checked my phone.

The following night I had a nightmare that I had some type of auto-immune disease, that would give me months or only several years to live. The only symptoms I had were fatigue and heart palpitations. I placed my hand on my chest and felt my heart thumping rapidly under my palm. Later, I was trying to find information on a young man that also had the disease, but discovered that in despair he had killed himself after receiving his diagnosis. In the dream I contemplated keeping it a secret from my parents so that they could spend my last days with me without the sadness and urgency that the knowledge of my illness would bring.

I can’t shake my heartache, my anxiety, or the fatigue that follows emotional exhaustion, no matter what I do. I’m so sad I almost don’t want to go to Paris anymore. The only thing I want to do is curl up in a dark room and stop moving for a week. And the sense of guilt that prevails as a result of these feelings — why can’t I snap out of it? I’m so fortunate to be able to go on a trip like this; I have so much to be thankful for — is almost too much to bear, restarting the cycle of guilt and anxiety.

I thought writing about this would ease my conscience and the burden on my heart but it’s only succeeded in helping me state the facts coherently. The feelings are still there.