Getting out of bed should be easy.
That’s what you tell yourself this morning as you desperately try to motivate yourself out of bed. But it as though your body is disconnected from your mind, and instead of moving you feel paralysed and helpless. You close your eyes. The battle between you and life has begun.
It’s not until lunchtime that you finally summon the last reserves of energy within you and drag yourself out of bed to the bathroom. You manage to brush your teeth, to wash your face. You even manage to get changed. And then you sink to the floor because you’ve got nothing left. By now you are overcome by a wave of shame, self-loathing and utter helplessness. The feeling is so strong that you wonder if you can or will ever feel anything else again. It’s not as though you have a monopoly on bad things happening to you – but yet other people manage to get out of bed and stick to a routine, even when they would rather stay warm and protected under the covers.
The thought of leaving the house is too much. You don’t go to the library to work as you had planned, but instead you stay in your room, watching clips on YouTube, hoping that it’ll put you in a good mood for when you finally meet the world. Because although it’s now 3.30 in the afternoon, you still plan on going out. I will, you think, nervously watching the clock on your laptop. But the curtains are drawn and the room is dark. It doesn’t bode well.
A friend texts you to ask you round for dinner. You lie and say you’re sick. But is this lying? In a way, you are sick, just not visibly. Walking, something so easy, something you’ve been doing since you were a toddler, now seems impossible, too much of an effort. Talking? Well, that doesn’t even bear thinking about. And you can you talk to about the ever deepening emptiness that is growing within you?
It’s 4.30. You’ve had enough of the computer and so you crawl back to bed. Sleeping is the only way to forget about the emptiness inside you, to forget the bleak reality that is your life. When you wake up it’s dinnertime, and you still haven’t left the house. In fact you’re in a state of semi-consciousness, where you can’t tell what’s real and what’s not. And amidst all of that, the most frightening thing is that you don’t feel sad or lonely anymore.
You feel nothing.
You no longer care about the things that matter: exams, your health, your life.
It is a strange feeling, to be so low that you feel you can’t get up and shine a light on the darkness that engulfs you. There are days when you feel as though you can face the world, if you just put your mind to it. And then there are days like this which come out of nowhere: horrible, dismal days where you can’t bear having anyone see you in this miserable and pitiful state.
Today is a day when you realise that you’re not living, but merely existing.
Knownbliss 