Pills. Ups. Downs. More pills. More downs.

  This is the stage in the treatment of my depression, and in the post- 'failed-search-for-roots'; when I should start feeling better, throw my darkness into the winds, embrace life and forget my rotten past. Well, that's just not happening. I'm beginning to wonder when the feel good part is going start. I've forgotten what it is like to smile. Not just a 'camera-smile'. A true one, out of real happiness.

Looking back, what saddens me is that it isn't as if I've gotten nowhere at all. I have come forward a lot since all this started 3 years ago. I've learnt a bit about how life works, friends, relationships, how to prioritise, how to control my sadness, how to channelise my anger into my work, how to hold it in sometimes to avoid upsetting my parents. The fact is that all this doesn't seem to count anywhere at all! I don't feel any better. I still manage to alienate my friends, lash out in anger at my little brother, collapse into depression when I'm needed the most by friends, in college etc.

This is one point I had held onto, repeating it to myself, trying to convince myself that not managing to find my biological mother doesn't mean that this period shadowed by anguish and angst has been all in vain. I tell myself I've grown up, matured through my pain, maybe even become a better person..? Who knows.

Now what do I tell myself; when even that collapses around me. I'm back to the beginning. Yearning for my roots, enveloped in depression, lost in myself, isolated within my own mind, my fears, my anger, my desire to break out, and my reluctance to do the same. I'm crushed in defeat as I realise I'm back to square one.

A drowning soul - an expression of my rage and frustration

  Immersed, only salty sea water for miles in every direction. Struggling to breathe, thrashing against the treacherous white-capped, demonic waves. Lashing furiously with every last ounce of my strength against the roughness. How can anyone so lost feel anything but fear? Like hell, I don't. I hear nothing but the angry pounding inside my head. Rage turned inwards sears every fibre of my body. The frailty of my body and mind repulses me. A soul that wants to dive into the sky is cruelly contained, chained to this base and incapable physical form. Salt water everywhere singeing my skin raw. The red rawness I carry with me everywhere goes unseen under my facade of sanity. My mind, torn, cleaved like the Red Sea which by Moses was. What does it matter where you stand, you're only a slave to your demons. You are but enslaved by the raging battle within. I'm at the mercy of conflicting emotions and raw anger, anguish and ambition are my cruelest tormentors. I am consumed by aching numbness, weary of the fight. Aim for recognition, and it slips by you to someone undeserving; aim higher than that - to excellence -  and be crushed by disappointment to learn that the world applauds talent, yes,  but ultimately seems to  reward conformists who follow the rule book like the Bible. All around heat, blood, salt water and empty blue-gray skies. Choking on the metallic taste in my mouth, savouring the tug of the seaweed coiling itself round my neck, whipping my shoulders, cutting into my flailing arms. Stinging saltwater in my eyes and mediocrity all around me. Where can the pain inside me be allowed to explode? External beauty fails to inspire as much as the deadening rawness within. Give me a chance to turn it into something beautiful. Set fire to me now, let the fire outside and within me be one.