Not Quite Anhedonia

Instead of sliding out of shallow waters with a simple, determined stroke, allowing momentum and bouyancy to carry your body, imagine the sensation of running with your feet against the coarse floor of a pool or lake.  You are being held in place, even as you run, sloshing, seemingly stagnant despite the effort.  With maddening frustration your energy is drained, your breath usurped by plaintive yelps and lobbing sighs.  This to me is depression.  Some might rather refer to the condition as a more portable burden:  a wet wool blanket draped upon the shoulders, or one of those lead vests secured around you like a heavy bib by the radiologist before the screeching burp of an x-ray.  I have been scolded for not composing blog posts more frequently, for not knowing my priorities.  And such sermonizing is not unjustified, as I am admittedly one of the least ambitious or directed people I might summon to mind.  With my "weight gain project" I am uncomfortably full to the point of pain (physical and psychological); with what resembles an "E.T." figure of distended belly and wan, collapsible limbs like the metal support rods on the roof of an umbrella.  I am irritable, always in want of sleep or withdrawal from company and conversation.  Or, in a snap reversal, I am (albeit fleetingly) contented, calm, and sociable.  I have never really experienced "manic" episodes, as I am always at core an Eeyore, and I realize my glum state is likely another side effect of malnutrition.  I do not cry outright, as that would take a true recognition and embrace of myself and my situation.  Instead, I stew in a hazy disconnect from the world, with a perpetual tremble in my throat and stubborn furrow in the folded skin above my nose.  

You can likely sympathize.  Many of us encounter the blues --or, to borrow Holly Golightly's more nuanced description, "the mean reds."  But I resent when others push and prod, or interfere with this emotional state in a way that spells their supreme displeasure.  I am already aware of my chronic, debilitating failings.  I do not require input that contributes further to my bottoming account of self-worth.  The disappointment that I have come to embody is tragic, I realize; I know that only I have the power to rise above and reclaim a life truly worth recounting.  I value any readership that might pass through these scrolls and, in the meantime, apologize for the histrionics.