Back when I was younger, I discovered the concept of yin and yang and was instantly drawn to it. The idea that nothing could be perfect, that everything had to be subject to the balance of good and bad, seemed a great escape from the forced notion that if I simply put forth more effort, all of my shortcomings would melt away like unshaped wax, and I'd emerge from my parents' and teachers' molds a more complete person.

It always carried with it the darker suggestion, though, that nothing could ever be well and truly good, and this I was drawn to secretly as well - perhaps because I thought such a hard and true concept must surely be a sign of maturity to accept, and I wanted to see myself as wise, badly. In truth, I was terrified by the idea that nothing was static, that I could depend wholly on nothing at all because not a thing in the world was through and through positive or healthy. Things had to keep changing to keep from falling apart completely, and the idea of never being able to settle ruffled the feathers of both my ego and sense of security. My chief wanted superpower as a child: something like Shadowcat's, where nothing could truly touch me and I could slip through life's cracks uninjured. Forcefields, a healing factor.

Anything to keep the darkness at bay but my own imperfections in.


It took several years of slowly piling up unfinished homework and slices of my own skin before I saw a therapist, and it was amidst a furnace of howled accusations and denials from my parents, who knew (having raised me from birth) that I had nothing to be depressed about. How dare I mock their attempts to take care of me, how could I spit in the face of their own trials and tribulations by being bested by the emotional rollercoaster of a puberty lived in near-isolation from my peers? There was nothing for me to be upset about, and the very idea made them shudder with an agonized wrath like a pair of wounded animals.

Alcohol was traded for friendship of their teenage daughter, but that backfired too, and withdrawal instead from their two oldest children overcame them.

In the meantime, I fell in love and went through my own hell trying to make it happen - it finally did. I bested my own anxiety and depression and I can hold conversations with strangers, work at jobs that require face-to-face speaking abilities without too much mucking about in stuttering and fear. I daresay I'm confident about myself for the first time in my life, well and truly so instead of the false aggressive bravado of childhood.


But the yin and yang of before seems to be following me. It comes even on the tailcoats of great news and certainly any new responsibilities. I clutch the idea of death to my chest like a new lover, tease myself with knowing that thinking about it TOO MUCH will make it all the more alluring...but ignoring it makes it a constant buzz in my ear. I dream of suicide pacts and the endless black of not-knowing, of rejoining the Universe or of simply rotting on the ground. Fuck all the people who mocked me, I'll choose my own path in life, even if the only freedom I have left is to end it, how dare you question me----

And then, just before I can initiate the deed, I seem to wake up, I feel better, I realise my life has changed and I have control over it now.

But the dark parts happen more and more. I chalked it up to the normal cycle of moods, and then to stress, and then to not sleeping enough the night before, or exercising too little, or sleeping too much. A whole host of reasons because the first thought that entered my mind was too ugly to look at properly. Thinking it clearly would make it true, a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure.

Is my depression coming back? Is it an actual problem with brain chemistry, inherited by the less-fortunate members of my bipolar and depressed family? Something I'm causing on my own by way of my fear of being depressed once again, being so useless and frail, on a constant knife edge and the wrong side of desperation?

I don't know, and it terrifies me. I don't know who to turn to, I genuinely worry that I would talk someone's ear off and they would become deaf to my worries if I actually shared how often my dark moods come closing in. It's nearly daily, certainly weekly, and they'e done nothing but get stronger over the last six months - probably more. Does time move slower now or faster? Will it always move at all, and will that stop by my own hand or Nature's?

The only thing holding me back some days is the idea of leaving Kat alone, and I know I should be stronger than that. I'm alright now, but what of two hours' time? It comes and goes at random and I...could use a support group. I could use something, surely, to get me out of the self-absorbed and selfish notion of suicide.

The idea of needing therapy isn't quite so bad, but the thought that I could need medication makes me shrivel and I want to beat this on my own. But what am I even fighting except myself?