Take your time to read this:

do you feel the same as me

sometimes it hits me at my desk. When i'm at work I can feel it coming, creeping upon me slowly, taking over my head from within. It's best when it comes then, I can take a deep breath and drink of water and I can't even cry. If it's worse I can walk slowly to the loo and sit for a while by myself until it passes. It has to pass at work, I have no choice but to leave the tiny cell and return to the world outside, smiling at others as I pass and pretending i'm nothing new.

Sometimes it's there in the mornings holding me in my bed. I can't move, can't twitch, can barely even think. I stay there waiting until it's gone. It never makes me late, I can't let that happen, but it comes close. I miss breakfast or a shower and make up the time. I even set my alarm clock early, just in case.

I hate it worst when it comes on weekends. I can't leave the house, I have nothing I can do. It pushes me down towards the floor and if i'm lucky I make it to the bed. I prefer the darkness and heat of the bedclothes to the harsh cold and the rocking of the floor. The closeness of the bed stops me breathing which makes me move and stretch, uncurling. There's nothing on the floor, only the slow gentle rock of tears.

I don't remember a time when it wasn't there. I know they exist but the memories are blank. I can't imagine how it feels to be free but still I long for when I was. I know it will come again, that I will once more be normal. I have to believe that it shouldn't be like this, that some people never feel it. I cling on to the happiness of others who don't wish for the darkness.

I've given up trying at the doctors. They don't help. They give me things to make me feel ashamed, like i'm ill and should be cured by their remedies. And when i'm not they send me to others who scratch their heads and say here, take more. It still doesn't work. I know i'm the only cure, and one day i'll understand how easy it is to shake my head and say no. I won't let it make me cry.

The only time i'm safe is when i'm sleeping. It can't find me there it can't reach me in my dreams. There are times when I long for the night, and worse times when I long for much more. It scares me where my longings might take me if I let them but there are things that keep me here, people that won't let me leave. Sometimes it's enough to make me scream I want to leave so badly, but I wait for the night and sleep takes my pain away. Tomorrow is always a new chance, a new hope. It might not be there tomorrow.

There are other times when it's just too late. When I get home tired and sleepy and collapse in front of the television. When I sit in front of the glowing screen and can't move, can't rise, just watch the pictures flow. I don't eat, don't read, don't call my friends. Don't go out and don't want to stay in. But I do and the night comes.

I long for the release of sleep but it eludes me. I need escape from my conscious mind but my friend the darkness betrays me. Sleep doesn't come and I toss and turn restless and awake, longing for the stillness and another way out. It's nights like this that staying is hardest. One day will come with a night such as tonight and it will overtake me. I'll know it and i'll know that even a sunset won't save me.