Thus, the end of my leave from work ends and I contemplate going back. I was fortunate to be covered under FMLA. I don't know what I'll go back to when I go back, but I know that I'll still have a job and still make as much as usual.
But I'm not sure that my job is really protected. And I know I don't want to go back.
Madness is a sneaky thing, isn't it? It creeps up on you like a snake, slowly wrapping itself around you until you can't breathe and, by the time you realize it, you are helpless.
That's what my depression is like. I'm not a fucking idiot. I know that X,Y, and Z will help me, but I can't do X,Y, or Z.
I'm like a deer caught in the headlights.
There I am, just wandering around, and suddenly there It is, hurling towards me without mercy. But it doesn't slam on the brakes. It doesn't swerve. I'm standing there, caught unaware, unsure of where to move, and then there it is and BAM!
I'm hurt.
But I probably ran off into the wilderness before you saw the injury.
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So, there I was.
Cruising down this road, listening to these songs, and before I knew it the car had gone off the tracks.
And that doesn't make sense because, for fuck's sake, I'm the one driving this thing, right? I want this car to drive the straight and narrow. I want this car to follow all the rules.
I want this car's shiny paint job and sporty look to distract everyone from the fact that it's on its last leg.
But it won't do that.
And now I'm nothing more than a passenger in a car that I want to get the fuck out of.
But no one can pull me out of it because they keep insisting that I'm the driver.
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I don't know how to explain crippling depression to people who have never experienced it before.
All I know is that I want it to be over. All of it. My chest can't hold this much goddamn pain all the time.
But in a day or so, I go back to work and act like nothing ever happened.