I noded this as "
The habit of silence" but it got eaten by klaprot. They said it was daylog material.
As I sank into depression, I fought back, tried to keep alive, talk to people and communicate this change in me. I talked about the feelings I was going through, and people tried to understand. I could tell though from their answers that they weren’t quite getting it.
I kept sinking, and as it got worse the understanding also got less, since depression is a state distant from the general experience of life. I felt isolated, and shut up a bit.
I reached out, looking for others who had the same malady. I actually found some in my circles of acquaintance, we talked and commiserated and talked some more. And that was that. It was as if there was kinship but not quite enough energy to keep at it. I shut up some more.
I found a huge community of depressives on Usenet! I was saved! I talked and compared and battled and squabbled and gained friends who meant something! This was heaven, but based on the hell we were all going through. I got a few great months out of it. Then, well, I started seeing the cycles more and more, the way we fought the same fights or explained the same experiences. I saw how people came back when they needed a recharge and vanished when they were better again. I actually got a little better too. I left.
No, I didn’t shut up more, I just left the babble. Well, maybe I did get a little quieter after there.
All this time I played computer games, long hours of escape. Long hours of silence.
Then I got a job for a while, talked to people every day, exercised my intellect. Wow, it was still there! I was happy!
Except the illness came back.
So I retreated into my room with my games again, and the cobwebs crept around me. My wife could no longer take my lack of energy, and I had to move out, to a solitary cubbyhole. Nobody to talk to. Games, and silence.
I am sick of it now, sick of the sickness, sick of the silence. I am struggling with the cobwebs to write this, to keep writing, to keep living.