There's this...feeling in the background of my depression and mental breaks, and there's no way to describe it that's quite accurate enough.  Instead, let me offer a metaphor, and maybe you can build your own picture of what I mean.


Imagine that you have a vase.  It is precious to you, made of clear crystal, and the sole purpose of the vase is to hold many small jewels.  The jewels themselves are worthless to anyone else, perhaps they are truly just made of colored glass, but they are immensely important to you.

The vase shatters.  You don't know why.

You pick up the pieces.  You can't salvage all of them...the breakage has made a few unrecoverable.  You do your best to glue it back together, and you do your best to mimic the original shape of the vase in the process.  It's not a bad job, but certainly not what it was before.

You collect the jewels as best you can.  When you place them back in the vase, it seems to you that there are fewer than before.  Is that accurate?  Is it just that the shape of the vase has changed and your perception is different, or have you indeed lost any in the incident?  You don't know.

Time passes.  It all happens again.

This jewel...you stop while refilling the vase.  This color seems a little...off.  Is this one of yours?  No, it doesn't feel right, you don't feel as though you recognize it.  Must have just been lying around for some reason.  You discard it.

Time passes.  It happens again.  And again, and again.

At some point you stop and look at the vase.  It is hard to see through now.  There seems to be more patching material than crystal these days.  The shape is strange.  You don't remember how the vase used to look anymore.  Inside, there are certainly far fewer jewels.  You don't know how many are gone.  You never did.