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I feel like shit today; my legs are killing me and I feel totally, and inexplicably, down in the dumps. I won’t go quite as far as saying that I’m depressed, but it’s getting mighty close. And I don’t know why.

I remember distinctly when I was 17 my Mum asked me “what’s it like being depressed?” She was desperately trying to understand me. The thing is that it’s hard to explain. On the one hand, it feels like there is no light and no goodness left in the world. It feels like no matter what you do you will never again be happy, or healthy, and as such you don’t care what happens to you or anyone else anyway. But on the other hand it doesn’t really feel like anything—it’s like time and space stop and you’re stuck in the hellish present, all the time in the world is yours to wallow in your misery. Today I don’t feel that bad, nowhere near that bad, but I feel flat and down. And I don’t know why.

Well ok, that’s not entirely true. I know why, I just don’t know how. What I mean is that I don’t know what happened to trigger these semi-depressed feelings, all I know is I woke up feeling like the sun is behind a cloud. In the past, when I was seriously depressed, there was usually a trigger before an episode; perhaps someone said something nasty, or did something (that in hindsight was a perfectly reasonable thing to do) that made me feel bad, or perhaps I was just so sick that I saw no end in sight. Today, I can’t put my finger on what it is. As for why, well that’s hard to enunciate.

I guess the short answer is that I feel trapped sometimes. And when I dwell on this feeling of entrapment I can get a little anxious. I feel trapped by my physical and medical limitations and by the consequences they bring. That’s about the size and shape of it. I’m not so naïve or vain as to think that I own the patent on human suffering—I know there are people out there in far worse predicaments than the one in which I find myself—but that’s how it is: I feel so trapped sometimes, and I wonder how I will ever get myself un-trapped.

Some days I don’t even notice my limitations. I fly high on the thrill of being alive, of being able to do what I can do and not worrying about what I cannot do. I walk around uni feeling I could take on the world—just me and my walking stick, ready to whack anyone who gets in my way—as the musical chorus sings in the background and strangers on the street dance a perfectly choreographed modern number in which everyone is smiling. That is how I am most of the time: happy-go-lucky, seeing the glass as half full and generally full of life. And then there’s the flipside: all I see are limitations. Some days I can’t walk without pain; I can’t even really lie down for any length of time without pain. I can’t drink much, certainly can’t go out at night. I can’t drive so I don’t see my friends (the few that I have) nearly as often as I would like. I sit in bed, miserable, as an oboe mournfully fills the room with tear-jerker music. Happy-go-lucky is replaced with wallowsome misery and the glass is always, always, half empty. If not moreso.

Life seems so hopeless. And I hate feeling this way.

So where did it come from? I mean I do get the odd twinge of regret and anger now and then—modern interpretive musicals numbers replaced momentarily by soulful ballads—but this is just ridiculous. The only thing I can think of as a trigger is purely chemical. I take three regular meds, two semi-regular ones on an as-needed basis for pain, another two as-needed for migraines, and two mineral tablets. All of them say to avoid alcohol, but that is fairly standard and I have been advised by countless medical professionals that I can drink a little (which I have worked out to be about half a standard drink every three hours). I had one drink last night, a simple kahlua and coke, so perhaps that has messed with my brain chemistry? Or perhaps it’s just a bad day. But the trigger isn’t the point.

What started as something random has grown into something real and scary, and I don’t like it at all. I had so many plans for my life: by now I was going to be living near a beach somewhere, with a beautiful boyfriend in my bed, a car in the driveway and a diploma on the wall. And I don’t have that. And I feel so trapped.

But I will go to sleep in my nice warm bed, my teddy by my side. Everything’s alright, yes, everything’s fine. I’ll close my eyes, close my eyes, relax and think of nothing tonight.

Tomorrow will be a better day.