I couldn’t make myself get up today.

Or yesterday, or the day before. Even on my birthday (420 btw.)

But after nearly two hours of rolling around, trying to make myself comfortable, I dragged myself out of bed with only one thing on my mind: coffee.

So, here I am, at Newton Corner’s Starbucks, wishing that I’d brought my charger. Oh well. I haven’t written in a while so I thought I’d just sit down and let out whatever comes to mind. I’m not going to edit this. Because I want to come back to this post one day and read only honest things.

Everyone expects me to get better. I expect myself to get better. It’s just happening so slowly. I do feel different. I no longer wake up disappointed that I’m still breathing. I’d say that’s progress!

I guess I’m kind of disappointed that the process of healing is going slower than I thought it would. I don’t really know what to do.

It draws me in every morning. My bed. Which, sounds ridiculous, I know. But it’s true. I feel as if I am made out of white bedsheets, tucked in neatly under the mattress. I try to fight the urge to sink into the bed. Because once I stop fighting, it pulls me under and I drown. I drown all day and all night, trying to escape. But I just can’t.

There aren’t enough metaphors in the world to describe what depression feels like. It just feels awful. And I feel awful that I’m always writing about depression. But that’s the thing, you see. Depression takes over your life. You can’t escape it.

Sometimes, I forget that I’m depressed. When I’m watching a really funny tv show, laughing really hard with my friends, or when I’m high. But it always comes back. No matter how much I distract myself, at the end of the day, when I go to bed – it is still there.

I’ve had two coffees now, both tall, iced caramel macchiatos with extra shots of espresso. Joe’s here now. He rode the bus from school to here. Thank god for him. I had my charger this whole time and there was an outlet directly below my seat this WHOLE TIME!! (He pointed that out to me).

He’s bullet journaling right now (which has really helped me), but I forgot mine at home.

The other day, Joe and I were carrying boxes down to our storage unit in the basement. As he was opening the door, the boxes wobbled and I let out this mix of a yelp-scream because I didn’t want the box to fall. Joe said something along the lines of, “it’s okay if it falls, they’re just boxes of clothes. If it falls, we’ll just pick it up.” THIS MADE SO MUCH SENSE. It just didn’t occur to me at the time that this was actually no big deal at all.

So, why did my heart race so fast when I thought the box was about to fall? Anxiety, I guess. My to-be advisor said that I liked to be in control, for things to be exactly how I want them. And that couldn’t be more true.

I like being in control. No, I LOVE it. I never realized it could become a problem. I like knowing that my pens are aligned right next to my desk lamp. I like making sure that the bedsheets are tucked in and the pillows over the sheets. I like making sure that my titles are exactly one-third the space of my bullet journal. It’s always been this way.

I used to brush my hair 100 times. Fifty times on each side of my head. I was 10. I wanted to be pretty, I wanted to look like an adult. So, I had a set routine (like adults do, right?). I had to do homework right after school. I had to shower RIGHT BEFORE going to bed. And I always applied lotion on my skin so I would always be soft. I didn’t want to age badly. Whatever that means.

Anyway, as an adult, I don’t have a routine. I definitely do not put on lotion or brush my hair (Joe brushes my hair for me, bless him.) And I definitely do not do homework. I’ve concluded that the adult world is a mess that my 10 year old self did not see. But I also learned that it is okay. Because messes can always be cleaned up.