I have tried writing this post for over a month, and although I know it won't be anywhere near what I truly want it to say, it needs to just be written already. Hang in there with me while I try and navigate some of these thoughts and ideas.
If you don't already know, I have been struggling with depression, anxiety and Bipolar Disorder since I was around the age of 13. Things grew progressively worse at 16, and have only continued to plummet since then. I am 24. I have been hospitalized four times since 18, all due to suicide attempts gone wrong (or right? -- One could certainly argue that the fact that I was not successful in those attempts is a good thing). I have been on nearly every anti-depressant/ anti-psychotic/ anti-anxiety medication you can think of. I've even tried the natural route, with vitamins and teas that are meant to help mood swings and disorders. I've tried acupuncture, a special chiropractor, yoga, etc. Currently, I go to therapy once a week and I see my psychiatrist at least once a month to check up on medications and things.
I am obviously going to be completely honest and open with you in this post, as I have been thus far. It's going to be hard, but I really need to get it all out - or at least as much of it as I can get out. If you don't want to hear it (as I know many people probably will feel and have felt in the past), then leave. I'll be truthful and tell you that for those of you who really do not give a flying f*ck, I am angry with you. And I probably always will be. At any rate, I'm going to continue with this whether you like it or not, because I'm hoping it helps me, and ultimately helps others.
For those of you that don't know what it's like to suffer from chronic depression, this is probably only going to scratch the surface. There is no way in hell that I can describe how this feels and how Goddamn f*cking miserable it is. But I'm going to try, and maybe you'll have a better sense or understanding of mental illness.
It's been at least 3 weeks since I started feeling this depressed. I've been depressed before, obviously. But this time feels different. Part of it feels almost like it's the very end of it, part of it feels like it will last forever. Which would you prefer: dying now but ending your pain? Or living longer having to endure that pain? You don't need to answer that, of course; I haven't answered it yet either, nor do I really ever wish to.
Let me explain a bit what this "pain" is like... Imagine you are sitting in a chair in the corner of a room. It's a nice, comfortable chair in the corner of a nice, comfortable room. Maybe it's your bedroom, maybe it's your living room. Wherever you want this chair to be, just picture it as a cozy chair in a room that you like, a room that you feel at home in. You're sitting there, with nothing but your own thoughts to entertain you. So you start to think about little things, things you see in the room, maybe you think about how you're currently feeling, or about what you have to do that day. Then those thoughts turn into bigger thoughts - like, "What am I doing wasting time in this chair? I should be doing something with my life right now! Get up, get up!" And then those thoughts turn into, "But why do I need to be doing something with my life? What's the point? What's the point of this and that and anything?" And then you break into a sweat, a panicked sweat. This place you inhabit is so much bigger than just you sitting in that stupid chair in that stupid room. And you begin to worry and wonder and want to get out. You want to crawl out of your own skin, run away, go somewhere where you don't have to have these thoughts. ---- Okay, so I'm realizing how difficult this may be to comprehend for some of you. You may be thinking, "That escalated quickly!" or "What the heck?!" I suck at explaining things, so let me just try something else. Bear with me here...
It would be extremely cliche of me to tell you that this pain is like having a storm cloud hovering over you on a constant basis, but it's actually a very good analogy. As a wannabe writer, I'm trying to think of a better metaphor, but my creative juices are just not flowin' lately, so we'll stick with the storm cloud and see where it takes us. So it's this big, grey cloud that basically just dumps rain on you at the most random times. There's also a significant amount of thunder and lightning going on there, too. What I mean is, you are sad. A LOT. And it hits you at random times. And sometimes, you're not just sad, but you're angry and irritated. And it gets so bad that you don't know how to handle it, and you just want to start bashing your head into the wall. Like, a hundred times. ----- Urgh, this is not easy. Sorry, I'm trying.
Essentially, what I'm aiming to say is that depression sucks. And I often can't control it, and it just hits me like a ton of bricks at times. It sometimes gets so bad that I think about wanting to just go to sleep and then hope and pray that I don't wake up. Other times, I want to be proactive in my own death, so I down a couple of bottles of pills and wake up in a hospital bed with tubes up my nose and mouth.
I am doing a fairly terrible job of explaining and getting my point across. Well, actually, I don't know if I even have a point, truthfully. I'm just letting the world (or the one to two people that actually read this) know that I am not okay, and that is okay. I think.
Thanks for reading; I'll try to clear my head and write something much more logical later.
