The unexamined life is not worth living, and I am too frightened to examine my life.

I barely live it, drifting day to day in a haze, numbing myself with alcohol and porn and pointless online arguments.

I feel utterly paralysed, unable to move because I cannot see more than a few millimetres in any direction. I had dreams of writing but am afraid to find out that I have nothing to say, afraid to to try an fail and, although I know that not trying is a greater failure still, I seem to prefer the certainty of that than the unknown failure beyond.

This is depression, of course. I recognise that I have sunk into its coldly comforting embrace again, although I have never truly been free of it. I know this is not the worst I have been - I am not lying vacantly on the floor for hours or making complicated plans to end myself (in retrospect the complexity being something a a survival strategy, part of me knowing that I just needed to survive long enough for the urge to pass).

But I feel I am fighting terror. No, not fighting - holding it at bay, covering my eyes so as not to recognise it like the monster in the closet.

Not fighting. Letting myself sink.