My Depression Makes Me Feel Like I Am Engulfed In Flames

Sometimes it feels as if I’m engulfed in flames and there’s a constant struggle to get out. I always try to find the fire-starter rather than run away from the flames; if I could find the start of the fire then I could find out how to make the fire stop following me everywhere. I could quit burning everywhere I go to the ground. I could stop everything I care about from being destroyed and I could move forward.

Every time I try to find the source, I only find myself. It’s always me holding the matches or in some cases, I’m holding a flamethrower- to do maximum damage to anything that tries to get close to me. Maybe it’s a fear of letting anything get close to me. It’s a fear of getting hurt again. I try to make it stop, but it always finds a way to rear its ugly head.

Trying to make things stop doesn’t always work. It never works. I find a fear within myself and I can’t turn it off. I can’t make things stop. I can’t do it – I can’t do this anymore. I feel overwhelmed. Not only am I engulfed in these flames, but I’m also drowning. I’m drowning in the sorrow of my losses. My self-created losses are worse than whatever I could convince anyone else that they are.

I try daily to pretend that I’m fine and I can get through this. Every single day I try to push through and pretend that I’m okay and that everything else is okay. I try to pretend that my life is just like everyone else’s. I try to pretend that I’m not fighting through fire and flames just to survive. I try to pretend that life is perfect and that this depression isn’t an overwhelming fight that I’m struggling just to get through for one day.

That’s turned into my daily mantra: “Just make it through the day.” It doesn’t always feel forced. There are some days that I feel like I can make it. I feel like I can keep pushing through. Sometimes it feels like my depression doesn’t even exist. It feels like I’m on top of the world and queen of everything.

Other times it feels like I’m the lowest scum of the earth and can’t even push through just to get by through the day. I won’t even feel like leaving my bed. I need to remind myself that I’m worth it. I’m always worth it. I know that I’m worth it, and I know that other people feel this way sometimes too. I know that other people feel that they’re undeserving, they’re not worth it.

I know that sometimes other people feel as though they aren’t worthy of pushing through the day, that they shouldn’t be here. I know that I’m not alone. Neither are you. No one is truly alone while they’re battling their depression. There are people that care more than they could ever imagine and that can be something hard to admit. It can be something hard to even acknowledge. Knowing that you’re worth it is hard to accept.

I’ve accepted it. I know that I’m worth it and that I matter to people. It’s not an instant cure-all to my depression, though. There is never going to be an instant cure-all to a chemical imbalance. There’s just going to be some things that do and don’t help. There’s going to be some things that trigger it further, and some things that make it feel so much better.

Sometimes I want to get on top of the world and scream out to everyone that they matter. I want everyone to hear the screams and I want them to believe it. I want them to know that they matter more than they could ever know. People have wronged others, it’s true. That doesn’t make their value any less than it was at first. People have been abandoned- they still have value. They are loved.

We are all loved by someone, and we are all here for one reason or another.