Sometimes you know exactly what's wrong with you, and it doesn't make any bit of difference...

Did you ever feel like you were trapped in an endless cycle, doomed to repeat it over and over again, regardless of the lessons that you think you learned along the way?  Like your existence was a whirlpool, with the sky always clearly in view, but no matter how hard you swim you are just getting lower and lower?  Have you ever realized that you had fallen in utter complacency, and that in doing so you were preparing to throw away everything you hold as important in your life?

A lot of people don't understand what it really means to feel depressed, because a lot of people have never really felt it before for any extended amount of time.  I go through cycles of it on a somewhat regular basis, and liken it most often to drowning.  You can kick to the surface and get another gulp of air, but you know there's not much time before your lungs will be burning again, and it feels like there is absolutely nothing you'll be able to do about it.  You watch everyone around you just going on, getting up every day and doing their thing.  You wonder if they feel trapped, if they feel desperate, if they ever feel the crushing weight of complete despair pressing down on their chest...

Is depression a form of insanity?  I just recalled that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.  If so, I must be insane.  I repeat my mistakes constantly, and every time I do I say to myself "I've learned my lesson, I understand now; I'll do things different from here on out".  And For a little while, I manage it.  Inevitably, I fall back into my same habits, the same patterns.

What do I want?  I want to be able to spend my time expressing myself, flexing the creative muscles that have been in my brain for as long as I can remember.  I want to be able to work during the day and return to my family afterwards not with anger or frustration or sorrow carried over from my day, but with joy and excitement.  I want to be able to look at the mountains as the sun rises over them and say "I wonder what's on the other side?" and then go find out.

I want to stop hurting the people that I love and finally bring them the happiness that they so much deserve to feel.  I want them to know that they never have to be the outlet for whatever negative energy I've managed to build up, because they should never face the brunt of my unhappiness with myself and my own failings.  I want to wake up in the morning with energy and zeal and get out of bed eager to get to work.  All the beauty and kindness and love that life can hold - I want to feel all of it, and I want to share it freely with everyone I know, and everyone I don't know.

I'm tired of feeling the way that I do.  Tired of making excuses to myself and my loved ones.  I am tired of allowing myself to fall into the same cycles endlessly.  Because that's what depression seems to do.  It punches you in the gut and laughs at your misery, and when you finally recover it seems to have gone away.  You grow complacent, not realizing that it never went anywhere at all.  It's just biding its time, waiting for the moment when you most think you've defeated it.  Then it punches you in the kidney, and laughs even harder.

I believe that we are responsible for our own fate.  We all have choices through our lives, we all have decisions to make that will forever shape who we are and where we go.  I never wanted to hide behind anything, I never wanted to hold myself back so significantly, to cripple my own growth.  But that's all I've managed to do.  I've stagnated as a person.  I've let depression take me over and manipulate me to the detriment of everything in my life.

No more.  I've said this before, so many times.  I've meant it, so many times.  The cycle needs to be broken, if not for my sake, then for that of my family and friends, for everyone I know and care about.  For too long, I've let myself sit still just because I was sad that I wasn't moving forward, not realizing that each was fueling the other.  That cycle, man, that damned cycle.  My wife and kids deserve better of me.  I deserve better of myself.