Wandering Aussie

Confession of my depression (part 1)

This is going to be long, and personal. So buckle up. It’s going to be 2 posts. Which will become self explanatory.

A few people in my followers list have been talking about depression lately. I’m not sharing this to one up them (this isn’t a competition) but I’m hoping sharing more of my story may help some people out there.

I’ve been suffering from depression, anxiety, and post traumatic stress most of my life. It’s incedious and nasty illness that doesn’t make you sad. It completely takes away the energy, emotion, motivation, and most of all sense of self that you need to participate in life.

As well meaning friends say, and continue to say.

“Why don’t you just cheer up?”

As those who have suffered from it know, it’s isn’t that easy. It’s all pervasive, and doesn’t let up because you have close company, or a partner, or friends, or participating in something you enjoy. It’s their following you around, reminding you ever second that life is going to keep pressuring you, and pushing down on you so hard, that some days it feels like your chest is going to explode.

What keeps you going in times like this? Sheer bloody mindedness, that things will hopefully get better. Anyone that tells you that you are weak because of mental illness, is full of shit. Dragging your sorry arse out of bed to a world that you have zero interest in or motivation for is the toughest act of defiance that you can have.

You hang on to the slimest of hopes that things will get easier. That one day you will wake up and it will all be gone. It doesn’t happen like that. It’s a ongoing process, it is battle you have to gear up for, and it will be the fight for your life.

The casualty list can be as long as any war. You push the people you care about the most away, and comit some of the most henious acts to your self, and the people around you. All because you are embarrassed, unmotivated, humiliated, or scared to show whats really going on.

I’ve burnt through relationships, friendships, colleagues and strangers. Been so paranoid about reaching out for help that you would rather suffer in silence rather than go through the process again. To admit you need company, and then make them suffer because you hated to show your frailty, and most of all you want them to feel as miserable as you, so they know how you feel.

It’s a contradiction that is difficult to understand, and even harder to suffer through. And most of all it makes you isolated, and feel more alone than you have ever felt, because the one person that you should never feel uncomfortable with is your own self. You’re alone, because you no longer have a healthy relationship with yourself, and the self talk going on within you is more destructive then what the worst person could ever do to you in your life.

You look for other people or life experiences to fill that void. From relationships, to bad eating, to sex, to drugs or any other number of self destructive behaviours that crush your soul even more, but for short periods of time make you feel alive enough to forget how badly you feel.

I have been through them all.

But things do get better…

Part 2 coming soon.

Edit : Removed the cut. Yes it’s personal, but I want people to feel free to share this.