Thinking Content From a Depressive Episode
Morgan Reddick
(she/her)
Working on the Wurundjeri land of the Kulin Nation.
My name is Morgan (She/Her) I reside in Naarm/Melbourne and identify as a Queer Woman. I use art and poetry to cope and live with complex PTSD. I have studied a Bachelor of Sociology and Sociology, hence the philosophical tendencies of my prose.
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When did my self-worth get tangled into the acceptance of other people? From other people. My self-esteem is so low and warped that I believe I have nobody to a point where my purpose and point to being alive is not justified by mere existence. A belief I used to have. I no longer think my life is valid in and of itself. The philosophy of birth. Accepting the inexplicability of my coming into existence? I grapple with this at the core of my being
2. I feel frustrated by the fickle nature of love. I love so hard, but back out at the crucial moments. I do not love those who love me back. Unrequited love, a constant theme in the life of many. I resign that it is the universe taking care of those who are not meant for you. People fall off, like the healing skin of a sunburn. If human emotions were more steady, we could not have evolved so far. Yet humans undo themselves entirely with their irrationality. We presuppose logic with our intelligence, what hubris. We are purely driven by our reactionary selves. Reacting in love, to love, from love. Why am I so bitter, and disappointed? Disgusted by what I thought I wanted. Changing my mind. I am wrong all the time, I appear to feel wrongly too. I am unsure what to make of the idea that I love the wrong things, as though there is such a concept. Surely, love is always right. To the vision it may be. But I choose to sludge in the swamp, the wasteland of my memories. Fraught with regret. Love is pain, one and the same. Life is suffering, said Buddha. The source of life is love. I thought.
3. I curse the world that raised me, the world of convenience that serves my every need. The privilege that gave me the books to read, and the time to indulge them. The capitalism, trade and production that feeds us, gives us an extreme comfort that most are unable to deny. I fear I could not cope nor survive, if I were to leave. The same system that fails us feeds us, how are we supposed to make sense of that?
4. I feel like I am being played by the universe. And I guess in reality we are. As we are completely held within their hands. The great gods or whatever. They send me signs but I have no idea what they mean. As though I am lost in a country where I don’t speak the language.
5. The voices of what other people think in your head is just another facet of your ego. Thriving on fear of destruction.
6. Part of me believes my problem may ironically be an elated ego. An ego so obsessed with itself, so self-absorbed that each interaction it ponders revolves around itself. Circular. So that each event is a result of a personal failure. This is what I have been struggling with of late. It is the constant criticism, the critique, the self-reflection that does not evoke any kind of improvement. Merely further destruction as a result of engaging with my own thought process to begin with. As though I was programmed to make myself miserable through self-destructive thoughts. The risk in writing this down is manifesting these thoughts further. I actually struggle to write the negative down much because I am afraid of solidifying it. Yet my thinking patterns appear to be carved in as children’s names on concrete footpaths out the front of suburban houses. There for the next 20 years until the council uproots. The cruelty is we all are stuck in pattern, even positive people are utterly misconstrued, but they are at least positive. Us cynics have a heavier bag to carry with us and sometimes it does get hard to continue lifting.
7. The world is doomed.
8. Suddenly content with the pervasive emptiness of our existence. The persistent pointlessness, that numbs the edges of our passions. Confusion, what exactly where we supposed to do here anyway?