Depression is a blanket

Depression is a blanket.

It's a blanket you wrap yourself in every morning when you wake up and it keeps you down. It's a weighted blanket, and to wear it you have to build up your muscles so that you can walk around outside with it. To live your live in the blanket you have to get used to shambling and shuffling, struggling under the ponderous weight. Sometimes during the day you might forget that you're wearing it. You might say to yourself "the sun is out, I feel lighter. I feel brighter." But then you remember the blanket, and you realize you were tricking yourself into believing you weren't wearing it. It's like a reverse Emperor's new clothes situation where other people can't see what you're wearing, and you're the only one who knows. It's invisible, but sometimes it's the only thing that exists for you.

At the end of the day you try to take the blanket off, but it weighs so much that the task of removing it proves too difficult. Plus you've been out and about and don't have the strength to take it off, so you pull it tighter around you. Because it's there. Because it's familiar. You realize you don't want to stop wearing the blanket because it's part of you. Perversely it clings to you and makes you feel like you need it. "This blanket is my friend" you say as it crushes you slowly. When you wake up you reach for it again, because you have a relationship with it. And an odd comfort overcomes you.