Was exhaustion the spawn of depression or was depression the spawn of exhaustion?

I felt that I did not have a voice, That I was insignificant, I felt powerless. I was a worm caught in a raging stream who realized the futility of struggle. Why striving to succeed when failure waits at every turn of the road? This pervasive notion of life, this debilitating agent gnawed at me constantly.

Doubts lingered in my mind, like a bad taste in the back of my mouth, Like venomous seeds in my heart.

Some were destined to rise while I was destined to remain in the shadows, toiling in the gutters, without hope, despair being the only nourishment for my brain as any possible prospect seemed to have shrunk considerably, almost to naught, as it were.

Sleep. The last refuge. It had become my opiate. And, still, I remained irremediably drained, physically weary, from dawn til dusk, day after day, month after month; the dull monotony was only broken by vicious fits of migraine that throbbed virulently and drove me mad. And those migraines were always accompanied by a potent waves of stifling and nauseating undercurrent that assailed my senses and deepened my feeling of helplessness.

What is the point of living if you can’t feel alive?