Tension, tension, tension
I feel it slowly wrapping its cold hands around me until it becomes a vice grip.
The tension turns into a suffocating feeling of loneliness and emptiness.
I try to swallow the emotion but it eventually grasps ahold of my being, not allowing me to breathe.

I try endlessly, relentlessly to shake the feeling but it won’t budge. My entire body goes into a state of numbness, unnatural and unrelenting.
Sometimes the emptiness turns to maniacal rage at nothing, sometimes an overwhelming sadness that makes me weep and hyperventilate.
Now in this state I am trapped, unable to shake the feeling, unable to feel anything but these enhanced emotions I don’t understand.
Some days the grip tries to get me to hurt myself, twice I’ve given in. Forever will I have the cut marks on my left forearm.

Most times I drive I fantasize about a head on collision with a wall or a tree or a truck to come hit me and end all of the emptiness.
Sometimes I want to take a knife or anything sharp and see myself bleed; feel the pain as some sort of foreign feeling instead of emptiness.
Some days I want to burn myself. Some days I slice my entire arm with keys because the scars won’t be permanent and I can continue to hide from telling others how I feel inside.

I don’t want to feel this way but it is comforting knowing how I will feel instead of uncertainty. The sadness has been here for so long I don’t remember who I was before it. Apathy is a safe haven of mine, it allows me to stay trapped not living up to the potential I feel in my mind during short moments of clarity I experience every few weeks.
I try to grab hold of these things I know are good but it is exhausting to try and live above the feelings of emptiness I have.
I am not suicidal but I constantly question why I am alive. I feel I have no purpose and that I am a failure.

I’m 28, I have my whole life ahead of me and some days I just want to be dead, a fleeting moment of clarity. Death is so final though, there isn’t any more I can accomplish once I die. I never plan to take my own life, but yes some days it would be a hell of a lot easier than all of my stress and mood swings.

I guess to finish up my rambling; yes I am depressed, no I don’t need you to treat me like I’m made of glass. I want to change and am ready to put in the work to manage these issues. I’m stronger than this and I’m ready to embrace a life without sorrow, without regret. I’m ready to let go.

Kinabii - a dude on the bipolarcoaster of life