When it comes to emotional navigation, August and September are historically very difficult times of the year for me. I typically cycle through major depression at this time. Last year, I was passively suicidal. One year later, I am relatively better due to the trial and error guesswork of nearly 20 different medications, but I’m still not well. Moreover, my moods are not stable and I’m profoundly depressed relative to where I was about a month ago. I started feeling bad right around the time that August began. Much to my objection, my medication had been changed about halfway through the month, which sent me into a depressive freefall—but still, I kept living.
It is unfair of me to expect someone who does not share my illness (or one like it) to completely understand. If you have never stood on the shore and looked at the ocean, you don’t know what that feels like. If you have never flown on an airplane, you don’t know the sensation of take-off or ascension.
Mental illness = same thing.
It must be experiences to be understood. Don’t get me wrong, people can be there for you. They can try to put themselves in your place. They can read about your illness. Attend NAMI meetings. But when you are laying in your bed, unbathed for days, cell phone battery dead, thinking of the easiest ways to die – that, dear reader, can be hard for them to comprehend. Because, after all, “You have so much to live for,” “Nothing’s that bad,” etc.-bbb
Today, on , I felt deeply depressed and profoundly hopeless. My personal life in shambles, I’m an emotional wreck. My thoughts are constantly disorganized and I’m nowhere near where I thought I’d be at this time a few months ago. I’d expected to have certain matters settled that still remain up in the air. I feel like I have actual, VISIBLE question marks floating above my head. I can almost feel an electrical crackle of anxiety cascading from each shoulder down my arms to my fingertips.
To make matters worse, I have no food in my house. I am hungry which makes me even more emotional. Sharp hunger pangs are, ironically, caused by eating normally, instead of restricting, or bingeing and purging. Not purging does that to my metabolism. It’s a cruel trick, isn’t it? Ha! Eat and keep it down and you will feel absolutely famished. It’s my metabolism repairing itself. 🙁
And I have no money to buy more food. I have to wait on a measly, slow paycheck to come in the mail. It will be for less than a hundred dollars and I will have to budget it out. I hate my life. I’m tired of begging my family for handouts. I’m so pathetic. Is this all I have to look forward to? Living like this for the rest of my life? I’m trapped in a hell I can’t escape. How could anyone on the outside understand? I am drowning.
I am drowning.
Then I read on Being Beautifully Bipolar, something that resonated with me. She’s attempted suicide three times, but is making the decision not to attempt a fourth time.
Today has been one of those days when I have spent the better part of it in bed. I think I am a loser. I think I am a failure. I compare my life to others’ with jobs and houses and families. I think of all those great boyfriends that didn’t pick me. This isn’t self-pity. This is depression. This is wishing my head would stop hurting, that the anger and frustration I have been feeling for weeks would go away. This is wishing it would all stop.
And there it is – the lie. I don’t want it all to stop. I just want to stop feeling this way. There IS a difference.-bbb
“And there it is – the lie. I don’t want it all to stop. I just want to stop feeling this way. There IS a difference.”
RESOURCES:
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP): www.afsp.org
https://afsp.org/find-support/
National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI): www.nami.org
Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA): www.dbsa.org
National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 800.273.TALK
