Birthday Depression 2023

Photo from Canva

April is my birthday month.

This is my birthday week.

And here I am, avoiding my phone and barely telling people because my brain is lying to me and I don’t know how to make it stop except to feel how I feel, continue my routines, and wait it out.

It’s difficult to explain depression to people who don’t experience it. How do you convey how you cannot trust your thoughts? How do you explain that the monologue running through your head is telling you that you are an unnecessary burden and you deserve nothing? How do you verbalize that there is this part of yourself that hates you, hates everything you do, and believes that the world would be better if you weren’t in it? And nothing anyone says, including yourself, changes that belief.

Life has its challenges but I am in a good space considering. I am loved. I have support. I am financially secure at the moment despite carrying too much debt. I’m respected. I have a list of accomplishments that I’m proud of and regardless of all of that, I still feel like the biggest piece of trash this world has ever produced. Trying not to hate myself has become a full-time job and it’s breaking me.

I know these thoughts running through my head are not true. I know it’s all nonsense. Knowing this doesn’t stop me from feeling how I feel. I don’t know why this is a time of sadness for me. Maybe it’s because it’s so close to my father’s passing. Maybe it’s because I’m living through my mother’s experiences with Alzheimer’s. Maybe it’s because I’m currently enduring chronic pain and having to learn how to manage it. Maybe it’s the perpetual revocation of human rights by horrible people in this country. Maybe it’s being forced to navigate a pandemic with people who’ve decided that unnecessary death and disability are acceptable risks. Maybe it’s my ability to survive being tied to a meaningless job doing busy work for an organization that pretends to care for marginalized people while simultaneously playing gatekeeper as it siphons funds away from those people. Maybe it’s my disillusionment making itself known. Or maybe it’s that I’m of an age where I thought shit would be better than it actually is. And even if it is any of those things, the only one I could change is my place of employment and I’m old enough to know same shit; different company.