It’s back.  I can feel it.  It’s standing on the other side of the door.  The door I locked and barred and barricaded long ago.  It’s pressing on that door, looking for the weak point, the spot that will give and let it come crashing in.  And while it searches, it’s snaking its tendrils through the cracks and crevasses.  It’s wrapping those tendrils tight, round and round, and pulling me down.

I can feel it in the weariness that goes all the way to my bones.  Even after a full nights sleep, I often wake up more exhausted than I felt when my head hit the pillow.  By the end of my work day, I’m on fumes.  Cooking dinner or doing a load of laundry feel like more than I can handle.  Sometimes I do them anyway.  Sometimes I just can’t.  By the end of the week, I can barely get out of bed in the morning.  On the weekends, I usually nap, even though I sleep in.  I never quite feel rested.

I can see it on the scale.  My stomach is a greedy hollow, never satisfied, always asking for more.  And exercise would require far more energy than I can muster.  I have gained back (yet again) 8 of the 10 pounds I managed to lose.  All my clothes are tight.  Everything on my body feels swollen and bloated.

I recognize it in my inability to get or stay motivated about…anything.  It took me weeks to plant my vegetables this year.  We’re not talking about acres of rototilling and planting and weeding. It was 15 plants, in pots, on my back porch. The drawing I’m working on remains unfinished.  My writing has been nonexistent.  My house is a mess.  New endeavors never seem to make it past the planning stage.  And I often even avoid thinking about things, choosing instead to play games on the internet.

I know it in the way I am isolating myself from everyone.  I’m not spending as much time with my dad.  I haven’t made plans with friends in months.  Even online, I lurk, scanning through what everyone else is doing (and sometimes not even that), rarely commenting or posting anything myself.  I play games with strangers, or with no one at all.

It’s obvious in the way I am even more sensitive than usual.  I find myself tearing up over the littlest things.  Perhaps worst of all, I’ve found myself feeling jealous of people on recent occasions, instead of being happy for them.  It’s a terrible feeling that I pushed out of myself more than a decade ago.  To feel it creeping back in both terrifies and enrages me.

But mostly, I can feel it in the hopelessness that envelopes me.  I’ve always been a dreamer.  I’ve always thought life would eventually work out for us, that it was only a matter of time.  But lately, it’s been hard to hang on to my assurance that the life I want is coming, if only I continue to be patient and work hard. I’ve worked hard, and been patient, but it hasn’t been enough, and time is running out.

I’m trying to shake off the tendrils, but it isn’t easy.  Once they take hold, they cling so very tightly.  I don’t want to go back on medication that makes me apathetic.  I don’t want to not care.

I’m fighting, but some days, it’s so hard.  Some days, I pull myself up only to be dragged further down. Some days, I get knocked down, and it’s too much effort to stand back up.  Some days, the void is too wide and too deep to see a way across.

But I’m fighting.