on the doldrums of sleepy time

I imagine Dante if he was not occupied with the allegorical fire and brimstone and was instead more concerned with the more provincial and indeed the real aspects of hell that man goes to, I would imagine then, one of the levels of hell, to be sure, one of the ones further down the chain would be the battle for shut eye.

 Additionally, I submit to you dear reader that Dante’s inferno is at its core nothing more than a feel-good story, for it is only perhaps in the realm of romantic comedies and comic book movies that the recipient is expected to take such a leave of his lived-in experiences and suspend his core beliefs to allow himself to board such fanciful flights of the imagination. It took me a life time, but I finally figured out why he called it the divine comedy. What a laugh, what a glorious laugh to think the elevator into hell stops at level 9.

Rock bottom as a concept denotes only a failure of imagination, the truth is man carries on falling mercilessly down, the sweet comforting concept of a floor to suffering is the stuff of children’s fairytales.

In my multi-decade personal research into depression, I have found no such floor, the downward descent knows no bounds, much like the work of M.C. Escher, there is no end in sight, and if one is gleaned momentarily, you can rest assured, it is nothing but an optical illusion,

You’d think spending days on end in bed catatonic, out for 14 hours at a time is the worst of it, what could be worse than rotting away your existence? what could be worse than developing agoraphobia well into your thirties simply due to the withering memories of the outside world? that ought to be the dictionary definition of the worst of it, but think again Alice, how far does the rabbit hole really go?

You start thinking I have committed infanticide against my hopes and dreams, I have traded away ever making my loved ones proud of me, I have given up on having a partner and being a part of a community, surely all of that has some purchase? Surely even in a rotten deal such as this, you get something back, if only to make the contract biding.

Nope.

 Never a bottom, never a rock, instead, quick sand; nothing solid, nothing stationary, just an indomitable force pulling on interminable space.

these days, the new bed routine is a silent scream for about 8 hours followed by a death of the mind for about 6. I go to bed and it is not poignant thoughts about my lost potential that keep me up, not shame about my state and how far I have let things slide that steals sleep from my eyes, it is not even an enlivening anger that animates and destroys.

 Oh trust me what I wouldn’t now give to feel emotions as deep as loss or shame, what I wouldn’t be willing to trade for the sweet release of anger.  No, it turns out depression is the preeminent manifestation of the law of entropy, everything devolves. Complex emotions in time give way to more elemental impulses, I say impulses because I don’t think terror rises to the level of an emotion, there is no vantage point in the mind that can observe terror and report on it. No words can capture terror and give it form.

And yet if there is one thing I have learned, and at this point it might actually be the only thing I have learnt; this is not rock bottom.