If you're having a good day, I suggest you stop reading this post now, as it'll probably depress your mood. If you're still reading, be forewarned this will also probably scare you. I've started several posts like this, but I get to writing about why I feel this way, and there is no why to it. It's irrational, so trying to reason with why doesn't work. Then I get frustrated, as if I needed to feel worse. Instead, this time I'm just going to try to describe what it's like.

First of all, I'm sick. I've been sick for as long as I can remember. Some days it's worse than others, but it's always there. It's a very nondescript sickness. It doesn't hurt in a way you can sense. It won't make me sore or cough or vomit. But it's a sickness all the same. It's a lukewarm burn of evil that starts at the base of the sternum, in a pit, and rushes up into your bottom lip where it wants to be spit out, but it's not in your mouth; it's in your lip. It feels like miasma and sludge coursing through your body. It's like the scene in X-Men when Mystique poisons Cerebro and the clear blue liquid is overcome with the black. It feels like you should want to throw up, but you won't. The best word, both in definition and onomatopoetically, is taint.

On the days it's bad, like today, the first thing you notice is that you're thinking through fog. It's strangely quiet, almost eery, in your mind and you only hear one thought at a time. But your thoughts don't quite feel right. You're not sure that they follow a straight course, and you can't necessarily remember what your last thought was. It also feels a whole lot slower.

Things don't normally go right on those days. They probably did, but you don't notice those things; only the bad things. It's not even the awful things, the things other people might feel schadenfreude over. It's the subtle doom, the small things that you had hope in. It's the private goals you set and failed almost immediately, and it's the frustration that comes with realizing you can't change. Since you can't think quickly, you get distracted easily, and you accomplish nothing. You cannot focus.

It evolves. Something someone said, something someone noticed that you didn't want them to, someone you respect said something, and you probably took it wrong, but that doesn't change the guilt. Guilt leads to shame, and I can think of no worse feeling. Having accomplished nothing, you feel even more guilt, and you start to worry. At the least it's, What do they think of me? Do they think I'm lazy? Today it was, Am I going to keep my job? Do I even want to keep it?

Then it gets worse. Your brain is cloudy, and your thoughts start to get darker, like black arrows shooting through the fog and leaving curling wisps in their wake. You try to steel yourself against the shame. I don't care. Sometimes it works, because it's something you're willing to not care about. I don't care what people think of how messy my apartment can get. Other times it doesn't, because if you don't care, you get fired, and then you do care.

About now you're feeling hopeless. There are no better days ahead, and you really couldn't care less. In fact, you welcome the idea. Feeling good hurts. The word happy makes your tongue's stomach curl, and your head feel like spit. You're not sad, though. There's not a whole lot to be sad about. You're sad when someone dies or when someone steals from you or when your friend does something hurtful. None of this happened today. You're not sad; you don't feel anything at all. What you do feel, though, you know you don't like, and you know there's no escape.

So now you want to escape. Nothing sounds so wonderful as nothingness, complete stillness, pitch black, silence, peace. You don't want to die, but living is not among your top choices. A third alternative, ceasing to exist, would be ideal, but it's not within your power, and it's not like God would grant that wish. You don't want to die, but the sentence I want to die repeats itself in your head over and over and over. Every third thought. Sometimes it's not I want to die but I don't want to live. It's hard because most people don't see the difference. Living is just so uncomfortable. Not like a poorly designed wooden chair. More like being chased by people who intend to torture you, and always being one step ahead of them, but never able to take a rest. It's like drowning without the pain and death.

I don't want to live. You start to fantasize about different ways you might suddenly die. You always aim for painless -- you're not trying to make a point, be a martyr -- you just want it to stop. You want release. You feel like your chest might burst, but there's no pressure. You just feel cooped up with something you want to expel. Expulsion is another perfect word, both in definition and onomatopoeia, for what you want. A sniper shot to the head. It might be gruesome, but you'd never know what hit you. It might be interesting to suddenly turn out of the line at the stoplight and run into that tree as fast as you can. It probably won't kill you, but maybe it would help somehow. It would probably at least change your circumstances. Too bad your car is probably not built to get over that median. Your typical methods of suicide -- overdose, slit wrists, carbon monoxide poisoning -- don't appeal to you. They're not quick enough. They don't have that snap that would trigger the release you seek, the release you need.

People have always told you that suicide is the most selfish thing you can do. So what? If you're to the point of wanting to commit suicide, you probably don't give a damn what they think. And no one ever trying to talk you down could ever really love you the way you want, the way they say they might if you get down off the ledge. It doesn't work that way. Anyway, living purely for the pleasure of other people feels like slavery. Them telling you to live because it'd be selfish to die sounds a lot like their selfish desire to stay happy themselves, now doesn't it?

Your thoughts jump around from fantasy to fantasy, car crash to bullet through the head to falling from a building. Sometimes it's not even dying. Amnesia is another way out. Amnesia is a new beginning and no one can blame you for it. They can't say you were selfish for forgetting your past. Sometimes you picture the frantic people after the car wreck. Sometimes you wonder how long it would take for someone to notice that you'd been shot through your window in your apartment. On a three day weekend it might take a few days. It's all meaningless, but it's what you think about. What if you suddenly found yourself in your daily scrum meeting and people you don't know are talking about something you've never heard of? What happens if you ask where you are? What are their expressions going to be? Are they going to be serious, or confused, or thinking you're joking? How would you answer that question in their position?

And then you want to be alone. When you're alone, you can brood without people's opinions of you changing. You can tell them you feel sick, and you'd be telling the truth. You hate how you're feeling, you hate life, but you don't want to get better. Getting better leads to disappointment later on. Just let it end now and be done with it. You feel sick. You want to vomit, but it's in your lip.

The only way to feel better, not well, if temporarily, is to sleep and wake up that way. That usually works.