Unadulterated.

Runnin' through the moment as the sun goes down

 Starlight, starlight 

And all I ever wanted was to hear that sound 

All night, all night

This is gonna be an unadulterated, extremely long post.

Today, I remembered a vague moment of "normal"
It was 6 years ago. Vague, I couldn't make everything out, but I remembered how I felt.
I felt alive.

Momentary throwback to a past reality.
In a moment, I was thrown back into the present.

If I had to choose, I would say it was only less than a year ago I realized that somewhere along the line, I had changed.

I withdrew not because I wanted to, but because I was ashamed.
Scared of what would happen if I stuck around and along with self-destruction, I would have burnt all bridges in a sad attempt to justify myself.

No, YOU are wrong. There's nothing wrong with me. YOU are the problem. I'm right. I'm okay. You're crazy.

No one's ever been this lost.

When I used to read accounts of people who seemed to have lost themselves in depression, I could sympathize but never ever understood the gravity of being in that situation.
It was only when I realized how likely it was that I'm suffering from the same thing did I finally, finally find those words an echo of my thoughts.

I do.
I do feel hollowed out
I do look in the mirror and see only a remnant of what this person used to be.
My idea of happiness is normalcy. Sad, happy, angry, REACTIVE.
Not counterfeit emotions, changing by default. It's like I'm running on automatic.
If (sad),
cry.
Elseif (happy)
smile
Elseif (satisfied)
laugh.
I know why I used to cut. It was because I could never find it in myself to genuinely feel anything and I had to validate feel 'real' by experiencing physical pain.
Pain as a terrifying, torturous feeling.
But it was real.
Is that why I felt alive when I was scared? I genuinely was when I was alone.

I know what it feels like to be able to feel happy or sad, excited or angry but at the same, to be everything but that.
If hollow was an emotion, that would be how I would describe depression.

But I don't know how to explain both to people around me and myself that I'm not lazy.
Not in this sense.

My mind is fighting between thoughts. The bad ones always win.

I'm just not myself, I'll cry and cry.
A hushed lull, "I'm not okay. Please don't judge me. I'm not okay."

The wanting to not exist. To not be a burden. To not hurt. To be real. To be an actual product of my own emotions, my own thoughts unadulterated by depression and anxiety. To be pure.

How, I wonder.
What went wrong?

I understand why the call it a disorder. Nothing is ever in its right place, all is jumbled up, some pieces lost, some lead astray, some lost all their colour. My thoughts are malleable and brittle. A bad conductor of my being.

In a few years, will I still be writing something like this? Will I have progressed?

Will I finally kick this disorder in the ass and say "This time, it's you who have lost."