New year

New year—yet nothing is new. Old habits persist, old pains fester, old wounds tear themselves open once more.

A blade of pain twists in my chest; my hair is clotted with blood, my fingers slick with crimson as I rake my scalp in manic desperation. Echoes of the year gone still reverberate, heavy with depression, its shadow refusing to loosen its grip.

Mental health is like a bad debt with compounded interest. You can never touch the principal; you only service the interest, endlessly. The interest knows no forgiveness. Every payment goes to it first. Years pass, the balance barely shifts. A borrower pays faithfully for a decade and ends up owing more than he ever borrowed.