I am facing facts. I have been feeling bummed for more than two weeks. All I do when I get home from school is sleep. I either overeat or I don’t eat for more than 8 hours. I cry at the drop of a hat.
I’m depressed again.
I’m not sure what the trigger has been. I think it has a lot to do with vitamin D deficiency, since I’m indoors most of the day and I don’t drink milk due to allergies. A lot of self worth issues are a culprit, too.
When I’m depressed, I feel like two different people struggling for control. My logical self knows that I need to be around people when I am depressed, but my illogical self pushes people away – for whatever reason. I’m mean and grouchy and do everything to get people away from me. It’s like the disease knows that when I am alone, I am more vulnerable to destructive thoughts and destructive tendencies.
Like today, for example. I had a crappy day, then I came home and slept of the couch. Then I moved from the couch into a bed and slept for a few hours. I kept telling people to leave me alone, when I really wanted to be around people and when I was left alone, I felt like no one cared enough about me, so why shouldn’t I just off myself?
Bullshit thinking, I know. And really, in hindsight, it doesn’t make a lot of sense unless you’ve been there.
And then I lied there and cried in the dark for 20 minutes. Then I forced myself to go out and run errands. I felt abandoned by the people in my house, so I was angry and hurt. I left in a huff – but it didn’t really feel like me. It was like having someone else control my body, running on auto. I was completely aware, but compelled to act in this specific way.
And then there’s all the destructive thinking – why am I not good enough? Why doesn’t anyone care? I could go out and ‘insert horrible thing happening to me here’ and no one would care. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
This is what I battle every single day of my life. Medication made it worse, like I was a girl possessed. Most of the time, I can control it – work to correct my negative thinking. Explain myself to myself and why these bullshit thinking patterns have to stop. It’s a full time job, balancing self care and everything else. I really need a strong support network, and a lot of times I don’t feel as though I have that.
I once was labelled as ‘emo’ by someone who was explaining who I was to another person. This pigeon-holing is just as terrible as my own thoughts, because it creates this social stigma – before, depressed people were just crazy (and why can’t they just cheer up?); now, they’re ‘emo’ and ‘whiny’ (and why can’t they just cheer up?). If it was as easy as flicking a light switch, I’d have done that already. I have been in therapy 4 times, been on 5 different medications, and being working through it on my own for over 10 years now. I’m not lazy about this, nor do I need to ‘get help’ by subjecting myself to more medication. I need to have supportive people around me, I need to be outside in the sunshine, and I need to NOT BE LEFT ALONE IN A DARK ROOM TO STEW IN MY OWN DARK THOUGHTS. Dear god.
And I need this to be a supportive environment. I need people to tell me if/when they are concerned. This depression stems from decades of self-worth issues from being abused as a child, and cool people I can count on would be awesome about now. It’s nice to have people to blow sunshine up your ass once in a while.
I know this is a bit much for the tl;dr crowd, but if you’ve gotten this far, yay for you.
