TW: depression, surgery, suicide.

Depression is a symptom. It is. My therapist said that’s the only relevant lens to look at it from – in most cases. “We need to stop pathologising it as a society.” You’re deeply unhappy for long periods of time due to your circumstances and your inability to change them (or the inertia being so large that it’s not possible for you to, really, even if that inertia is large because of depression).

Anyway, whatever the definition, I don’t want to delve on it too long.

The trouble is, I think I’m going to be depressed forever. And while it has a myriad of causes, there’s one that is prominent right now.

My surgeons botched my surgery. I have a non-ideal outcome. They can pat themselves on the back for aesthetics and retaining some basic function that already existed, but it’s useless beyond that. They can take photos and show it to other prospective patients – doesn’t mean jack. I’m not receiving the level of medical care I deserve as their patient.

I made a mistake in choosing them.

I don’t want others to make the same mistake. So I’m going to write about this whole experience – in detail – where other queer folks are at online. At the level of despair that I exist, I don’t even care if they sue me for slander. I can’t sue them for the surgical outcome because I signed papers. But I can talk about my experience, factually, because that is reality and nothing can stop me from doing that.

I was born into a broken body, and science couldn’t fix it.

I am afraid this is my whole life now for the rest of the time that I do have here on this rock.

Always recovering. Always going to the hospital. Always chasing. Always in pain. Always feeling broken. Always helpless. Always begging for the bare minimum.

I am tired of spending my savings on health issues that never seem to settle down into normalcy. I am all but an experiment now.

I save so I can pay rent if I lose my job. I save so I can travel. I save so I can splurge on things now and then. Not to lose a blanket of it every time something goes wrong. And most times, it does seem to go wrong.

My body’s not taking it. They keep saying it’s my body. But they don’t know what it is. They shrug and say they don’t know. They’re not even making an effort to find out, or suggest atypical solutions for atypical cases.

All of this is beyond their tiny brains — unfortunately for me.

And I don’t know where to look. I know that I am all alone in all practical matters — post-op support/care, financially, and in terms of research. One of these days, I won’t be able to get out of bed. And maybe it’ll be for good. I will lose my job, pack my things, move back home, and never ever have a “life” as I saw it again.

This little glimmer I had in the last 6 years, it was all that. Glimmer.

Momentary.