One thing I have noticed about my depression is that when it is especially severe, it has much the same effect on me as a nightmare would. I break into a sweat, have trouble breathing, and above all, want nothing more than to just PURGE the bad thoughts from my head. I hit my head sometimes, as if I could physically remove the obsession with the negative. In many ways, life becomes a giant nightmare, one that can't be stopped by simply waking up. Just as nightmares can cause extreme irrational terror, I get the feeling that I am trapped in some kind of horror movie and that my brain is locked in perpetual silent scream. Sometimes, when I'm alone, the screams aren't so silent. It probably doesn't make any sense to those of you who haven't suffered from depression, but sometimes life and truth can feel like needles injected right into my brain.

The bus stops. I fall. On top of people I don't know. Not only that but I look ugly today, too, wearing odd-fitting pants and odd-fitting hair. I want to cry. The little voice in my head laughs at me and tells me to DEAL WITH IT.

The rain won't let up and I am cold. I am biking and the wind is pushing me back into my own space, but somehow I refuse to stop, because the little voice hitting me with the wind says DEAL WITH IT, because i have this odd notion that it will make me a better person if i keep going.

I look forward to her voice all day, and then i see her, and she bitches about curtains. I love her but we'll never get along. No one can hurt me like my mother, but i keep trying, throwing myself into the fray, all the while knowing it will end with screaming. I sit in my room and call myself a wimp; i didn't try hard enough. The little voice tells me to clench my teeth and smile at her even if I secretly want to throw pots at her.

I walk home from work and i feel nothing. This is the worst. I can't deal with this. I can't. There's nothing to struggle against, to close my eyes and brace myself for because everything is empty. My little voice is silent. These days are not something I can deal with, push away. They come back to me like a nightmare sometimes, and I think they will never end, but they always do, somehow.

The thoughts drive me in circles, insane, and it is all conjecture: 'what-if' and 'let's say', scenario construction that leaves me trembling, shaking, scared.

In the moving car with my nose pressed against the window (cold and fogged} I know we are going to have an accident and my hand will be crushed, bone shattered. Later, waking up, my first thought is to check where we are. An hour left on the highway, still snowing, good. Things should go as planned. As planned! Later yet, sitting in class that afternoon, I realize the crash did not eventuate. This is not me, then , I am sure. I am still in the parallel dimension, swishing fast down snow packed highways and headed for collision.

On the train, knowing that at home there are five hysterical messages from my mother. Knowing that the baby does not 'just have a cold' and need monitoring, no, she's in the hospital and now she's dead, *poof*. Shouting already, in my mind, mumbling words in horror. Chris, no. Shit. No. Fuck, stumbling over my own tongue in agony. Shuck. Fit. Chris, help, she's dead, talking in my mind to a friend I haven't met yet, clutching his shoulders and shaking him. Fuckfuckfuckhelp.

At home the answering machine glows steady, no messages. The baby is fine.

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