my depression

You and I need to talk. I need to figure out my relationship with you. I am in touch with my feelings right? I interrogate and analyze my behavior constantly. No wonder I think lowly of my psychologist, or psycholotherapy in general. What more can it provide? I do enough interospection all the time. 

I know and recognize that you now have a hold over myself. You cloud my days with this huge grey cloud. You darken my days. You steal energy, desire and pleasure out of my life. I do think about death more often. Even though I don't always crave an exit but there are times when I do want it to switch off, or rather get switched off, sometimes by me. 

I wonder when did you take it away from me? I know a certain deep seated fear entered my life when I was raped. Something was broken even though I'm not sure what. This terrible shake that still captures me when I think of it sometimes. Or when I'm triggered by everyday consumption. But did it start before that? Or after? What did listening to the stories of rape survivors who are also refugees do to me? Did it make me angry, cynical and detached? Yes. 

Was that you back then? Or was it your hands trying to snatch me into your darkness?

the blows in my friendships were strong blows, and the subsequent phase of being addicted to dangerous sex was probably an aftereffect. Maybe I was trying to prove that I'm strong again. 

That I survived the rape. And in the process exposing myself to more rape, violence and theft. Oh and also HIV.

I think a lot about that time in my life after I became positive and my goodbye time to Cairo, to the place I called home, that I had given up on giving up on. Why do I think at that time The knowledge of departure tore me. Is it a certain resilience that I miss? i miss a kind of resolve and determination I felt. That my next mission was to save my life, and to save my family from the pain of having me arrested or exposed. A certain humor I armed myself with against the horrors of the world.

It was my arrival and lack of arrival that broke my spirit. Being attached to a body hated, regulated and wished dead. I lost my confidence and my sexual desire. I lost the ability to care for myself. To find peace in my skin.

Why do you sink in now? Is it because the struggle to survive back in my home was hiding you? Are you a privileged problem? I can't claim so. Maybe something did break.

I cry and I have nightmares. I struggle to do normal activities. I don't enjoy the things I used to like. I am desperate for understanding. I'm desperate to explain my layers of pain. I'm so exhausted. I wish we can build a better relationship with each other. One that is based on understanding and appreciation. Should I be grateful for you for something? Perhaps you help me too. Perhaps you help me take a break. Or center myself. Or something from those gratitude selfhelp books. My friend said that it is a struggle to 'succeed' in white countries. 

That we need to make it. At this point, I'm not sure what success means, probably surviving. To survive you.