Do you know what depression makes you feel like?

It makes you feel like a shadow.  Like a nightmare creature told in the stories of children's fairy tales.  It drains the life and joy out of you and leaves you feeling like a memory of who you once were.

When you have the strength, you get up for the day.  You get ready, you walk around, you go through the routines just like any "normal" person would.  Except where other people may have feelings of dread or excitement or nervousness for what their day holds for them, you feel nothing.  Everything is just going through the motions.  Doing what you have to do because its expected; and besides - what else is there to do?

Some days are better than others.

The bad days you have to talk yourself into existing.  That while laying in bed for the whole day may seem best - (that's when you can best pretend you're not here, right?) - it'll only make you feel like shit later on in the day.  Or the next day, depending.  Sometimes it takes any and every amount of what little effort you have left to put one leg over the edge of the bed, and then the other.  Then sit up.  Then stand up and walk yourself to the bathroom.

Those days are gotten through with baby steps.

The good days, getting out of bed isn't really a chore.  You can function.  You look normal, sound normal, you even exhibit emotions that are seen as "normal."  You laugh, you talk, you interact.  To anyone else watching you, everything seems fine.  You seem to be able to function in a perfectly easy-going, effortless manner.

Which is, of course, a lie.

Because years ago when you first started to feel the edges of the darkness fraying around you, you didn't put on a show.  You lived your life like an open book and didn't pretend to be happy.  Until one day in high school that one friend stated "God, stop being such a downer."  And from then on, you put on a happy face and pretended the life was rainbows and sunshine and kittens because you didn't want to be the one bringing people down.

So you became the world's greatest actor.

A shadow impersonating a human.  You look like a person, you communicate like one, you even smile and joke like one.  But on the inside, it's empty.  You feel like you're dying; like you've died a thousand deaths.  'I wonder what it would be like to kill myself' becomes a casual, daily thought.

Because that's what depression does to you.

It takes and steals and robs.  It takes away any emotions you may feel, it steals away the simple, everyday joys that people take for granted, and it robs you of being able to live life to the fullest.  Even more so, it robs you of hope.

And the longer you go on with this beast inside you, living your life as a shadow-person, the more the light fades.  The further hope slips from your grip.  And any life you may have had before depression settled into your soul becomes a faded memory.  Not even something you can recall living on your own, but like a slice of happiness you read out of a book once.  You experienced it through words that painted pictures of happiness but you didn't actually experience it on your own.


So that is what life becomes: a shadow.
Muted colours, smudged edges, pixelated images.
A shadow creature living in a shadow world.

Late night baking.  Cookies are in batches, taking their turns in the oven.  I'm listening to my (horribly) self-made playlist appropriately titled "Fuck It," because that's the mood I'm most often in lately.  I'm thinking about a boy.  My phone - as it often is these days - is on airplane mode to keep people and interruptions at bay.  And I'm drinking a bottle of Magners while my latest batch of photos are importing into my photo editing program.

I keep coming back to the question 'Why do people like me?'

Though, perhaps, I shouldn't pose it as a question.  Because that's not really what it is.  It's more of a conundrum in my mind.  Having a lot of time (read: too much time) to think these days, I have found myself pondering a lot lately, why it is so fucking difficult for me to accept that other people may actually enjoy my company.  That they like having me as a friend.  That they actually appreciate me for being...well...me.

And I think I have solved the puzzle which has perplexed me for so long.

People who love themselves, expect everyone else to love them, right?  And on the flip side, people who hate themselves, expect everyone else to hate them, yeah?  Following this logic, if someone doesn't like herself, she therefore can find it quizzical that people may actually like her.

What a turn around.

Things were so different - opposite - a few years ago.  I was confident.  I knew who I was.  I had a five-year plan.  I knew who I was.  Even more so, I liked myself.  I enjoyed my company when I was alone.  I enjoyed silence, and pondering the deeper and more complex issues of life.  I knew who I was.

And then we enter present day: 28 February 2017.

I don't know who I am anymore.  I don't know what direction my life is heading.  I break the silence with any kind of noise possible because if I'm left alone too long with my thoughts I start to suffocate.  And I most definitely do not enjoy my company; which goes hand-in-hand with not liking myself.

Which makes me constantly question "HOW can people like me??"

I questioned this back in my teen-years too.  But back then, that question was fueled by different things.  One was a non-existent self-esteem.  The other fuel was an almost-obsessive need of validation for my ego.  'Tell me why you like me.  Why you want to be friends with me.  Why you think I'm so amazing.'

But peoples' thought-processes rarely go in such a direct and conscious linear way when choosing friends, right?

It's usually more like this:  You meet.  Your personalities mesh well.  You decide that investing more time and effort into this person you happen to get along swell with is worth it.  You eventually become friends and become a part of each other's lives to some degree.  Rinse and repeat.

So asking people "Why are you friends with me?" hardly seems like a fair question, right?

I learned years ago that asking that question didn't really get me results.  As most people are apt to do when confronted directly with a question so blatantly blunt, they flounder and stumble and stutter and don't know quite how to answer something they've probably never thought about.  That's fair, I suppose.  As already aforementioned, people don't pick friends in the same manner they might pick out a, say, house.  They don't make a pro and con list and then decide accordingly.  It just...happens.

Maybe this is where the younger, inflexible, everything-that-can-be-controlled-must-be-controlled Aimee comes into play.

Clearly people are like me, right?  Sure, I have my subconscious like everyone else.  But I am so aware of my thoughts and their progression in everything throughout the day, others must be as self-aware as I am right?  Wrong.  (So very wrong.)

Don't worry, this is yet one more thing I learned a long time ago: almost no one I've encountered in my life is as aware of their thought and the progression of their thoughts as I am.

Suffice to say, in all the thinking I've done, I have concluded the source of my confusion as to why people like me.  I don't like me.  I don't enjoy my company.  So the ability to comprehend that there are people out there who may actually enjoy my existence is an unknown to me.  And that's okay.  Since I have realised this, I can accept it.

After all: I don't have to understand why people like me in order to accept that it's a fact, right?

(Right.)