Too much honesty.

Confusion.

Thoughts of Angel... of Rhett... of Kadin...

...and a conversation with Arrasto that went, I suspect, to all the wrong places.

I'm so tired / of playing / playing with this bow and arrow / gonna give my heart away / leave it to the other girls to play...

Depression.

It's a curse, is what it is. Irrational, demanding, awkward, always coming at the wrong moments, taking up space and time, leaving you feeling burnt out, empty... dead? Maybe. Certainly not all that thrilled about life, not when life includes feelings this consuming and this horrible.

*shrugs*

I've dealt with depression most of my life.

I like saying that. I've dealt. *snickers* You don't deal with depression. You try to go on with your life, you try to keep coping, but you're not dealing with it, any more than you'd be dealing with a hateful, hurtful great-aunt who has moved in and you can't make her leave, you can't shut her up, she smells of rose petals and stale flesh and a frightening amount of time, after a while the whole house carries her stench like a war-banner, waving it at you, as if to announce that it has changed sides in the silent struggle and is now siding with the woman who by rights should already be feeding the carrion, or the worms...

...depression.

You don't DEAL with it. It's not rational. It can't be just talked away. It doesn't ever really go away. Eventually you learn little tricks for functioning through it, ways to try to cheer yourself up, to distract yourself from it. Eventually you tell people you're dealing with it.

But the truth is that it's eating you alive, tearing at you, every moment of it is a moment of your life that isn't yours.

Sometimes you can fight it. Sometimes there are drugs, or change-of-scene, or maybe you find a way to make your life less stressful. Sometimes there are good days, days when everything is sunshine and chocolate.

And you think you've got it beat.

You think you can deal with this.

*snickers* You think you're fine.

Depression is a monster that you don't grow out of. It's a beast that won't go away just because you turn the light on. You can't erase it. You can't forget it. It's always somewhere, buried under your happy thoughts and your day-to-day life, waiting until it seems amusing... then it springs at you.

Tearing at you.

Clawing, scratching.

Drawing your blood, red-black pools that gather in the back of your mind, waiting for a careless footstep, waiting until you track the ooze and the grime all over those happy little thoughts, turning them into dust and ashes.

Depression isn't something you can just 'deal' with.

It's something that maybe you can live with. Maybe.

I don't think people die of old age.

I think they just get tired of fighting the beast... they surrender. Death is a surrender.

Sounds pretty good, actually.