Depression

I have never shared this before but there are very dark places in the back of everyone's life. I have been there its a dark hopeless place born of routine and pretext. It's a place were one does because they are expected to. I cracked jokes because I was the jokes guy, I smiled because it was what people were accustomed to, I was the life of the party but every few minutes I secluded myself and went silent. I would walk away and cry because even in all this life around me I was dead.

Gradually I stopped going out gave excuses till no one called anymore. I would go to work and find a reason to keep away from everyone. I was sinking. But for some reason I found a reason to stay a float.

I woke up everyday and went to work not because I had to survive but because it would have been selfish of me to give up when there were others who depended on me. I found purpose in others.

Every now and then I would sink, I would sleep through the weekend and over exert myself at work. Work longer hours do more than my fair share and journalism is a cruel mistress because there is so much to do that no one notices that you are drowning in your undertaking. What they perceived as ambition and initiative was for me a mask, it was my hideaway from my own reality. I pushed myself to exhaustion because I knew that when I got home I would be too tired to feel the loneliness and emptiness around me. If I kept busy I would have no time to drown in my empty reality, the void that I lived in the dark abyss at the back of my mind.

People looked at me and thought there is a guy who has it all together. I was on Tv, I was a reporter on a leading television station, I went on international trips got to travel the world. I bought what I wanted hang out with influential people, hang with attractive women, went out to cool places... on the surface I was perfect. I was a three time business journalists award nominee. It looked and felt perfect. But inside I was dead, i was running on empty. I was so afraid  and scared of what I was that I did not know who I was. I knew what I was 'Henry Githaiga', but who was I? I was plastic everything around me looked like it was falling apart when everyone else thought things were falling into place. I could not sustain a relationship because while the ladys where busy dating what I was, I was looking for myself and I could not find me.

 What I was could turn on the charm, have fun, treat you well and give you one hell of a good time. But when you left I had no reason to keep what I was alive because who I was, was nobody. I was empty, i was lost...

I went on leave once during those dark times, those were the longest 5 days I have ever had to live through, I tried to keep busy but there was nothing to do. My mind drifted between dark imaginings I toyed with knives, the idea of jumping in front of a car, toxic gasses so I would sleep and never wake... in that darkness few things can pull you back.

 In time i drifted into dangerous habits. I wanted to fill the Void so bad. At first I thought it was an emotional void so I tried dating convinced myself that I was in love and for a while it worked but then it fell apart. I could not sustain a relationship so I moved on the next addiction. Pain. There are many types of pain and in there it gets darker and deeper as you try to fill that void with pain. Lets not get into it and lets just say that in everything you do you can find ways of pulling pain into the equation. But pain could not fill the void so i turned to religion and again it worked for a while but the void was deeper than that. So i turned to alcohol and boy could it fill that void. Mix it with a good night out and don't care where you wake up on weekends, add some pain and its perfect. But after a while it stops working. Then you seek something stronger but you get accustomed to everything and still the void does not fill up till you realize that only one of you can survive, you either climb out of the void or keep trying to fill it till it fills you...

For me it was photography, cooking for others, poetry and creative writing that pulled me back. It was that one person that liked I photo I took, it was the beauty I found behind the lens the beautiful sunrise, the majestic Sun set, landscapes, buying a camera saved my life. The ugliness inside me was cured by the beauty I found around me... (last year when the camera was stolen they stole more than just the device they took a piece of me away)

It was that one person that thought my blog was great. It's not the best blog in the world but 'CountryBoySays' saved my life. Through it I could kill myself in different ways, I could be shot, I could die, I could be hang... But in the same breathe I could love, hate, hope, have Faith, be a romantic, be a jackass, be hopeless, helpless, a villain, a hero...

But in those dark days I could have done  with just one friend, that's all it would have taken to pull me back... and maybe I should have told someone but such is the dark place that is depression. When you're in that dark place you keep hoping and praying that someone sees through your smile, hears through your laugh or pushes through your 'I'm fine'

Sadly that person never comes and you have to find your own reason to wake up every morning and tell yourself I will survive. Find your own purpose but even then that place never goes away its always there waiting for that one day that your purpose is removed it is a void beyond understanding an abyss from which few can hide. So reach out spend sometime with a friend give them a reason to smile a purpose. See beyond their smile, hear beyond their laugh, push beyond those two words 'I'm fine'

Your friends could be dying around you. They could be dying in your lively events, drowning in your laughter, slipping through the cracks of life, sinking in the quick sands of time... reach out, put down that beer and listen it maybe your last chance to save them from themselves...

And as always find away to spend more time with them for as Max Ehrmann put it in 'The Desiderata'

'...Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness...'