The Book of Counted Sorrows

You probably know someone in your life, it might even be you that deals with depression.
As if "dealing with it" could cover how it feels to battle that thing within.

Fighting Depression is a War with oneself. A war just to be something closer to passing as normal every day, every waking moment as it steals your sleep, your appetite, and the joy right out of your grasp.

The world becomes bleak, gray, hollow, and meaningless. You can still see the color, but everything has the sepia stains of an old photograph.
Others have nostalgia for bygone years.
With Depression you have nostalgia for yesterday. When you were one iota better than now. A single grain of sand happier.

It's a War against a Narcissist in your own head. It can't possibly be wrong. All this guilt, shame, and emptiness must be because you deserved it right?
That's why I call it a Narcissist.
Because Depression Gaslights you into gaslighting yourself.
You deserve this.
Be ashamed to ask for help.
Keep quite, they don care.
No one cares.
No one really loves you.
You're cursed.
You exist only to suffer.
They're all better off without you.
You drag them all down and you can see it plain as day.
You are a plague
The Typhoid Mary of Despair

You measure yourself not by how happy you are, but by how happy you are others. You experience happiness vicariously through those who can feel it.
But more like a poison than a drug, your body fights it, your mind fights it.

It's a War against your mind for your mind.
How could you possibly win right?
It feels like it's got the home court advantage, your mind is its playground, not yours.

Worst of all you lose your ability to forgive yourself.
And a person who can forgive nothing is a person who has been destroyed psychologically and emotionally.

I've lived this War, watched it claim friends, and the friends of friends. Watched it ruin people's lives, sabotage happiness, and drag down even the most blessed of people.

But, but you are still here, those fighting it today are still here. In a world where suicide takes nearly a hundred people a day.
While I'm writing this, someone lost the fight, and before I'm done more will.

So yes, you are cursed.
But your also blessed with reserves of willpower, good friends, loved ones, or some Guardian...
That others didn't have.

You are strong because you made it to today.
You are beautiful, no matter the scars this War has left on you. Those Wounds were earned, fighting for your life.
Because you know somewhere within that life is worth living, no matter the pain and emptiness.
You are not defined by your Depression. It is a part of the whole.
A curse and a gift.
You know how much a soul can hurt, you feel it every time it comes again.

And maybe, just maybe you see that ephemeral beauty that comes with despair.
Either way, it doesn't matter.
You are here today.
And you can be here tomorrow, you have it in you.
You have a special kind of strength in you.
I know you do.
I have FAITH in you.
I know you can do it, even though you may never beat it for more than a second, each second counts.
Each small victory is still a victory, and I praise you for ever single one of them.

So hold on, you're not alone.
Don't let it win, spite it with every breath.
Spite it, not out of hate for it, but determination to prove it wrong.

I know you can.
Because despite this world's worst
I HAVE FAITH IN YOU.

Is it better, to have loved and lost or to have never loved at all?

Equally which is better, to never be understood, or to have been and to lose the person who understood you?

By what metrics do we decide which is "better"

The heartbroken would bitterly say it was better to never have loved

While the InCel would argue the opposite.

Is it so wrong to not know the answers even after experiencing both sides of the question?

To still be confused where you're own heart lies?

I know after the death of my best friend...the only person I could ever fully honest with, without fear of judgement, or offense....

That I miss his insights.

I miss his optimistic points of view...even when I knew he wasn't long for this world.

But did I let him become a crutch?

Did I rely to much on an honest philosophical point of view that could match my own thinking?

Was I better for it? No matter the madness that came after its loss?

Or would I have been better off without those 21 years of unbiased camaraderie?

Would I have seen all the perspectives myself?

It's strange to lose someone who was only a year older, and a millenia wiser.

Maybe it is better to live both experiences, to feel the full breadth of creations possibilities.

To love and lose, and to wallow in solitude?

To have another point of view, and to have to rely on your own...

The absence of that sort of wealth makes it so much more valuable.

A friend of mine used to say something that became very near and dear to my heart.

The sweet, is as only as sweet as the sour.

Life only becomes measured by the variety of experience. Suffering is what makes Salvation valuable.

Solitude is what makes Love beautiful.

You cannot understand Heaven until you have walked through your own Hell.

The dreamsweapt landscape or rolling grassy hills, the flowers upon the wheat a pale purple.
The sky an ever soothing shade of dusk orange. Violet and purple clouds grace the windy sky as the move along slowly.
The grasses flow like a slightly disturbed pond.
The air is warm and strongly scented, lilac, lavender, lotus, and lily.
The winds soft soothing hum, and the feel of it across your face like a light sea breeze.
Monuments to long dead and forgotten goddesses  of beauty and love grace every pool or bench.
Walk ways of soft milky marble meander through this endless hilltop.
No disturbances, only the peace of inner beauty.
An artists ideal world.
A place where love never ends, a place i forgot about.

Never again shall I forsake the fields of my inner Elysium.
My inner peace.
I will hold my creation, my world of dreams closely.

I have failed you once more.
I've lost my wondrous Nymph.
A tragedy  like those of yore.
If only I hadn't stolen that glimpse.

Summer and Death had warned me not to look back.
Not to give into temptation.
But now I see it was courage that I lack.
Awash in trepidation.

I stole a glance before you reached the gates.
I lost the light of my Apollo
Why did I think to tempt the fates.
To find a future that is so hollow.

Oh Eurydice,  Oh Eurydice,
My love you have gone where I cannot follow.
I've lost my love, my life, my muse, my vice.
These tears I can no longer swallow.
My blood it runs as cold as ice.
And in despair I am want to wallow.

One simple mistake took you from me twice.
And you will not be there with me to greet the sun tomorrow.
Oh how I miss you sweet Eurydice.
For you my love, I'll try to not live in sorrow.

Shattered Glass

One of my first memories is of shattered glass and blood, panic, terror, and that eventual dizziness that comes from blood loss.
And the odd thought of how beautiful  my blood looked on the broken glass and the walls.
The shattered mirror and the multiple reflections of a pale bloodied boy I didn't even recognize as myself.
My leg still hurts from that night when the humidity  changes.

All that sparkling sharp edged glass, all over the floor.
The sweet adrenaline  rush of  blood loss.

But most of all....looking at those dozen or so blood soaked, pale, sunken eyed messes that were me.
That was the most traumatizing part of it.
Even then I was able to stand with glass dug to the bone of my knee.
I was transfixed, locked in the hollow gazes of my reflections. Rationale  shattered like the mirror....

After that....I wasn't scared anymore. At the age of two slowly bleeding to death, and I wasn't afraid.
I was quite the rest of the time waiting for the paramedics...but that's a story for another time.

Cockroaches...

This one still comes back to me in nightmares.
Three things I remember  from that night at that horrid babysitters down in Los Angeles

It was hard to breathe, and i was sleeping on the floor.

I remember  a shadowy figure in the room, a figment of a child's imagination? Or something  more sinister?

And Third. I remember the light coming on, and seeing an ocean, waves and all of shiny black and brown carapace.
The entire floor was covered in them.
I was covered  in them...
Cockroaches.
I remember  my mother's scream.
And I remember  being paralyzed, not with fear but perhaps fascination, or disgust, or just pure shock.

A glistening sea of tiny undulating hard carapace all panicking  to find the darkness.
And I realized then that I to would have preferred  the light to have stayed off...

She waits upon the shores of the Rivers.
She waits for her lovers embraces
She waits, watching us shiver
As our blood and heart races

She's never in a hurry to find you.
She knows exactly  where you are.
She never has to worry for you.
No matter how close or far.

She only wants to hold you, and waits for that day.
Solitude, and lonliness is the price She has to pay.
She's always at your back.
Worried that she'll lose track
Of the days, hours and seconds
Until she gets to hold you at last.

She only longs to hold you, to feel your warmth.
Something  she never had.
She waits to comfort you like no lover you've ever met.
She waits starry eyed, infatuated with every young lad.
All She has to do is wait, it's no gamble, it's not a bet.

For once you finally  close your eyes the final time.
The will grasp hold of you, your final lover.
And you will finally hear her rhyme...
Let go, let go, my lover, your pain. Is finally over.
The suffering will melt away in her arms
The pains of life nothing compared to her charms.
She has been waiting for you, she watched you from your first day to your last.
She cherished  every moment she watched you.
Relived every pain of your past.

She loves you because you are beautiful  in a way that she is not.
As temporary  as a spring shower, as fragile as a withered flower.
You are temporarily away from her immortal  love, her greedy, needy love.

But one day she will  have you, she will have us all.
For one day like the autumn  leaves  we to must all fall.
When we do she will be there to catch us.
She will do so without  trouble or a fuss.
She will  take you where you belong.
The journey  wasn't easy, the destination  is all that's left
She will wait for you, after all else is gone
For she has loved your life, how could she not, for she is Death

It's starts upon entry.
Soft candle light and the scents of sweat, tears, perfumes, and blood...
The rugs, drapes and paintinga immaculate.
The rooms are all soft cream colored and scented with scarlet and crimson silks.
The colors of a murder scene.

You can hear them now.
The soft cries, moans, and sighs of the tortured.
They wanted to be there, under the careful ministrations of a monster. Something not quite normal wearing human flesh.
Something that takes a perverse yet reserved joy in the suffering of its subjects.
They come because they love the pain.
The needles, pliers, salt and fire.

The cries grow louder and more ecstatic passing through the rooms.
A maze, a web, meant to disorient, leading to a spider.
A thing with a steady, studious, and predatory  gaze. Maybe not entirely human, or was  it ever?
Sharpened rings on its fingers, nine inch steel needles in its hands.
With a soft grin upon its face, as if listening  to Mozart, or Beethoven.

The cries, moans, sighs and screams are simply its favorite  music as it sips wine, and watches its restrained prey.
Detailing every flinch, every orgasm.
The air thick with the smells of lust and agony
A symphony  of suffering and pleasure.
A masterpiece  of the blurred lines of the human psyche.

Two inner darknesses, intertwined, and struggling for dominance.
Trying to win power over the other, wrestling and rending, biting and tearing.
Wounding, and teaching the other.
Sharpening their claws on one another.
The Demon, is despair, misanthropic, hedonistic and most of all bored and jaded with it all.
The Beast yearns to hunt, to chase, to fight and to win. The Beast is the Shadow the dark aspects, and the greedy, lusts of an animal.
Both want experiences of their own choice.
Both want dominance of the soul, dominance over everything.
To Live and to Die, similar but diametrically  opposed.
One lives, loves, lies and hates
The other wants to see the other side.
Both are destroyers, but Both also create.
They create storms of emotion
Blistering droughts of it as well.
Never peaceful inside the eye of the storm.
But it grants many perspectives and insights upon suffering.
Oh how they love pain, self and others. For different  reasons, rhythms, and rhymes.

They try to cage each other.
To subdue the other, a constant struggle that leads to constant  restraint...

And sometimes...you need to walk your Demons, Shadows and Beasts.

The line blurs.
One into the other into a swirling multifaceted  vortex of possibilities.

Concepts and words become a tossed salad of ideas. Birthing wretched new concepts. Breeding new paranoias and phobias.

My mind is rent asunder, possibilities, outcomes, fates, and destinies...
Coincidence always has a purpose.
Life's events have purpose
Divine the purpose and purpose the divine.
Find the purpose and find the divine.
Life is what you make of it.
It's what you take of it.
Break it, fake it, never gonna make it.

Live each day as of it were your last, a life unto  its own.
When you find yourself  falling into madness....DIVE.
As above, so below... the macrocosm is the reflection of the microcosm.

Numbers, words, correspondences. All so much. Awaken the Spirit, Awaken the Serpent.
Talk to yourself in the mirrors in the dark?
See what lays waiting there.
The monsters we all hide?
The next evolution  of the Demon known as Human.
They don't see, so close.
100 monkeys
Billions of apes.
Quantum DNA
Reality is stranger than fiction.
Apolloyon is Apollo, god's are Demons to a jealous God, that will have none before it.
Perspectives, Beliefs, expectations, make the leap of faith a bridge of solid understanding.
Change is the only constant, besides Death. Chaos is the only expectation I can reach anymore
As above so below, Order out of Chaos, Chaos out of Order.
Same shit  different  day.
What is a Day to the Creator, the First Obersever?
How does such a being measure Time/Space?
Chaos is represented by an eight pointed star.
God rested on the seventh Day.
What happens on the eighth?
CHAOS is coming.
It's already here, implanted into the very fabric of reality. ENTROPY, systems must break down.
The stars die, we die, bugs die, LIFE DIES.
Death with even come to Chaos and Change, eventually  the universe  will revert to being a dead, lightness, void...
No heat.
No life.
Nothing but darkness upon the face of the deep.
Everything Dies, that's  a fact.
This is just the larval state of the Universe, of US, of "GOD".
Die to rejoin the whole, but only after you've had your experiences.
The Universe experiences itself through you and I, and eye?
The particles  won't matter(a pun!?) When the energy reaches full consciousness.
A pattern of sufficient  complexity  will act as though it were intelligent  if treated as such.
Not communal consciousness
Not global  consciousness
UNIVERSAL consciousness
The Akashic record
The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
We are so close.
So close .....
We will get there piece by piece, by piece, by piece....
Just like Jason and the Golden Fleece...

Depression...

It's a nefarious, vulgar, hateful spirit of the mind. An imbalance  in brain chemistry turns sunny days and greed landscapes into sepia and monochrome.

It steals mirth, joy, motivation, and even thought from the minds it posseses.

The Demon rests within your own skull all the time, on your throat when you wish to tell others how much you love them.

Sits on your tongue when you would rightfully defend yourself.

And sits on your lungs  when you would scream and cry in frustration or despair.

Despair, is what it turns everything into.

Happiness becomes empty.

Joy becomes guilty.

It corrupts upon everything  it latches onto.

It darkens every mood

Numbs every positive emotion 

And eventually  it even traps your rage.

Until it controls everything. Until it can push your buttons, enrage you, stop your thoughts, and rend you asunder within.

It breaks you by breaking those you love.

Until you question  your sanity, and your right to live.

Some it beats down into a voiceless husk of a human, others it works slowly on, pushing everyone away until it reaches its goal...

You....

ALONE.

Then it knows it has you. It's burned all the bridges, pushed away all help and hope. 

Until you are left alone in the dark, with a gun, or blade, or rope, or pills.....

And It.

And it's filthy lies...

That you are worthless..

A waste of skin..

Never wanted..

Never fit in..

Waste of Oxygen..

You are Garbage..

You are the Outcast..

You are the Plague..

You are the Pariah..

You are nothing.....

Until it's right....