Isabel hauls herself out of bed and puts her shorts on over her boxers. “Okay, okay,” she says to no one in particular as she walks down the hall to the medicine distribution window. After swallowing the controlled substances that will beat back nature until the next dispensation-all have foreboding names with too many late-alphabet consonants like Serzone, Zyprexa, Trazodone- she shuffles back to her room and crawls back into bed, this time assuming the foetal position.
Doesn’t anybody else see how meaningless this is? How we are all consumed with our chores, which are ultimately useless because with the swipe of a broom we can all be swept away into the abyss. Here I am in a mental institution, trying to get better so that I can go back into the world and rush from job to job, killing time until I die of something other than suicide. I take medicine to help me deal with the nothingness of my life. Millions of us have to take pills to distract us from the sheer boredom of it all. We hurry from thing to thing like ants when we’re all going to end up suffocating anyway.
“Isabel.” The voice on the other side of the door sounds like Kristen’s. “We’re getting ready for the morning meeting. You coming?”
Isabel looks at her watch. An hour has passed.
"People look at me and they see this happy face, but inside I'm screaming. It's just that no one hears me."
This is a small excerpt from But Inside I'm Screaming by Elizabeth Flock. I have never found a more accurate account of what Depression is truly like.
Everyone feels like an Isabel sometimes.
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