One of the most common questions I get asked by my mother is why do you want to be here? It can be yelled out during an argument, spoken tearfully during an intense conversation, or spat out as a door is slammed. While I never have an answer for her, I don’t think she realizes what kind of question she’s really asking.
When she asks it, she’s asking why I want to be living in my house (my childhood home where I grew up and where both my parents still live) with my parents, where I’m obviously unhappy and where they are obviously unhappy. The truth is that this living situation hasn’t been working for quite some time – we live in a truly unhappy household. There’s a reason that young adults need to find their own places and it’s because you truly can grow out of your childhood home. In my case, the familiarity of my block and my childhood bedroom has probably dragged me into a deeper depression than I care to realize or admit, but I’m too “comfortable” to do anything about it (and let’s be real probably a little too depressed to feel like I CAN do anything about it)…
Upon reflecting on the question, I came to realize that I asked myself that on a daily basis; just I wasn’t talking about in my house, I was talking about the planet. While doing research on what happens at places where they treat depression inpatient, I stumbled on this article that had a quote that stuck with me. “I don’t want to die, but I don’t know how to be alive anymore.” Circling back to the eternal question of why do you want to be here, the only answer I can come up with is that I don’t want to be here, but I don’t want to be anywhere else, either.
A little bit of context: My parents are good people who were very unprepared to raise an extremely unhappy child. It’s not that they don’t believe that depression exists, but they just never quite got a handle on my issues, which has tainted our relationship for years. A lot of times, they’ll ask me basic questions (what do you want to do? or what makes you happy?) and my inability to answer them will frustrate them. The truth is that I don’t have an answer because I don’t want to do anything and honestly, nothing makes me happy no matter how hard I try.
While I’m not at all suicidal and there isn’t any part of me that wants to die, there is a large part of me that wants to be put into a coma – or a suspended animation of sorts – where I can just take a breather from life and not have to worry about calories consumed or hours spent in/out of bed or whether or not something I say or do is going to be taken out of context in the most ridiculous of ways. While this isn’t an option, the fact that it’s a constant thought in my head is worrisome to me. Why do I want to be here? I don’t. But I have nowhere else I’d rather be…
Depression Diaries 