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I wrote this to my friends today on a private feed on a separate social network, but after I finished my ridiculous rambling and the discussion that followed, I decided this is something I wanted to share with as many people as I can. It's not something I'm quite comfortable posting on my Facebook feed just yet, but I know you lot are a good crowd and will appreciate it for what it is rather than trying to dissect it into something it isn't. I do want to warn for depression and suicide before anyone proceeds, though!
If you have not read the new Hyperbole and a Half update, I highly recommend you do so here. It's very good, very clever with enough humour to lighten the situation without making a mockery of it, which is something Allie Brosh always handles very well. She is fantastic and I wish I could do what she does.
This story is, in so many ways, everything I am going through mentally and emotionally right now. My depression started over a year ago after a multitude of things I don't feel like rehashing at the moment, because this is not a means of saying "Look, this is my life! Pity me!" but because I want to explain how this affects me currently and, by proxy, you guys as well.
This is my experience of depression, and I think there are many people that have had similar experiences as well, or might even be currently going trough the same thing. This is is just how I am now, as I speak to you every day and every day for the past, oh. I don't know, eight months or so. Time is relative.
I am still at the point of blatant apathy. I have a severe disconnect between my emotions and my brain and the way I process things. Sometimes, emotions leak through, and I end up heavily crushed by sadness as small as being told there are no sweets in the house. Sometimes I'm bursting with too much joy to the point of a manic sort of uncontrollable happiness that leaves me bouncing from thing to thing without any measure of rationality or reason. These are rare occasions, but when they happen, they terrify me because I can't control it. I can't control myself or the way I feel, which is horrible.
But the apathy terrifies me more, which is why I want this public.
The apathy is my general state of being at a near constant. Allie's descriptions of feigning the appropriate emotional response is, in essence, how I spend nearly 90% of my social interaction. I react the way I think I might've over a year ago when I was more emotionally sound. Whether I hit the mark or not is up to you, because I can't tell, and I hate that. I hate not knowing what I'm feeling or showing and I hate that I feed my friends bullshit because I don't know anything else right now. It's tiring and frustrating and makes me a liar and a faker and I hate all of it, which is where Allie's depiction of that irrational anger comes in. I haven't reached the point of resenting my friends yet, but it's a close call. I get frustrated easily and I'm tired all of the time and I just wish it was easier to be around people. I see them functioning normally and don't understand why I can't do that. I don't like lying to people but I don't want to isolate myself either, so I trap myself in this farce of sociability that is so so very easy to tear apart. Which is, again, why I wanted this to be public.
This is how I speak to you guys. This is how I interact with you. I try to be normal and I know that I'm not, even if you don't realise it. I'm irrational and unpredictable, and there have been times where I have to close Plurk so that that irrational hatred and anger doesn't bubble up to spew all over you when none of you deserve it. I don't want to grow to resent the people I love. And I don't want to hurt the people I love. So I try to get better, but it's nothing tangible to grasp into. There is no step-by guide to overcoming apathy. It just exists, and it's a persistent fucker.
Sometimes I don't care enough to bother.
Her description of suicidal ideation hit me really hard, because I haven't been able to explain it or understand it in a clear and coherent way. I don't want to kill myself. But I don't want to be alive either. Being alive is tiresome and frustrating and it's too much work some days. I don't have the energy for it.
I told myself to make it to my sister's wedding, because I can't ruin her wedding by up and dying right before it. That's rude. Before the wedding, I had a moment of panic where I had to sit there and wonder "Well fuck. What am I living for now?" What's the next milestone I need to reach? What's the next societal obligation I need to fulfill before I can finally stop living? My 21st birthday is in three weeks and I'm not entirely convinced it's worth the wait, because I don't know what I'm living for. What's the point?
My therapist told me that I'm not living my life, I'm living everyone else's around me, and she's absolutely right. She told me we could do good work together, but I have to be here for it, and she's absolutely right. But I don't know where I am or how to find me when I'm too tired to care about looking. She told me to call her to schedule our next appointment once I make the active decision to start living my life again, and my immediate thought was "Well, what if I don't?" What if I just choose not to? What if I die before that ever happens?
I don't think about killing myself. I think about dying. Accidents or some ridiculously outlandish scenario that would never actually happen, like becoming Iron Man and flying into a wormhole because that's the cool thing to do. Anything and everything. It's how I fall asleep at night, on the nights I actually sleep. It's what I think about when I'm driving or when I'm hanging out with my friends.
It's not "I'm sad, and want this over." It's "There is nothing for me here."
That wasteland of nothingness where I live ( Las Vegas, NV ) and it's all I see, all that's around me. It's all I think about most days. But I'm good at acting and I'm good at pretending and every now and then, it actually feels like I might really care. Maybe. Somewhere. In those moments when I feel something, I wonder if maybe I can't feel everything again someday. Not often, but sometimes I do wonder.
I hold myself together like this, through making it to the next event I'm needed at or those brief moments of thinking I might have something to look forward to somewhere in the distance. I haven't found my wrinkled piece of corn yet and I'm not entirely convinced I ever will. But this post kind of opened up my eyes by putting these things in plain terms that everyone can see and read and actually understand, which is why I wanted to post this. Because it's happening to her and it's happening to me and it's happened to a million other people, will happen to millions more.
It's not a moment of "I've been there" or "I know what you're going through," because I hate those things. They're kind and kindness is a blessing, really, but that's not why I wanted to say this. I wanted to say this just so that it can be there, to see and read and understand that this is just a fact. It's something that happens and keeps happening and that's okay. I'm not a freak or a monster or trapped in the dark alone. There's a million lost people in a space that stretches an imagination that's too tired to fathom out the walls anymore. It is, and that's important to know, to just be able to say "yes, this is happening, this is real." It's grounding, and I need things to keep me grounded. We all need things to keep us grounded. It reminds us that maybe everything isn't hopeless bullshit.
So, in some ways, this post is my shrivelled piece of corn. In some ways, you are my shrivelled piece of corn. But everything is ridiculous and nothing makes sense and for the first time, I feel okay with that. I have my feet and my toes and I'm on the earth and I'm surrounded by people and one day, that'll be something beautiful again. We all live different lives with different experiences and different struggles, but we are experiencing them at the same time. Just knowing that is important. And I think that is what keeps us alive.
So I wanted to say thank you for living with me. Even when I don't want to be.
If you have not read the new Hyperbole and a Half update, I highly recommend you do so here. It's very good, very clever with enough humour to lighten the situation without making a mockery of it, which is something Allie Brosh always handles very well. She is fantastic and I wish I could do what she does.
This story is, in so many ways, everything I am going through mentally and emotionally right now. My depression started over a year ago after a multitude of things I don't feel like rehashing at the moment, because this is not a means of saying "Look, this is my life! Pity me!" but because I want to explain how this affects me currently and, by proxy, you guys as well.
This is my experience of depression, and I think there are many people that have had similar experiences as well, or might even be currently going trough the same thing. This is is just how I am now, as I speak to you every day and every day for the past, oh. I don't know, eight months or so. Time is relative.
I am still at the point of blatant apathy. I have a severe disconnect between my emotions and my brain and the way I process things. Sometimes, emotions leak through, and I end up heavily crushed by sadness as small as being told there are no sweets in the house. Sometimes I'm bursting with too much joy to the point of a manic sort of uncontrollable happiness that leaves me bouncing from thing to thing without any measure of rationality or reason. These are rare occasions, but when they happen, they terrify me because I can't control it. I can't control myself or the way I feel, which is horrible.
But the apathy terrifies me more, which is why I want this public.
The apathy is my general state of being at a near constant. Allie's descriptions of feigning the appropriate emotional response is, in essence, how I spend nearly 90% of my social interaction. I react the way I think I might've over a year ago when I was more emotionally sound. Whether I hit the mark or not is up to you, because I can't tell, and I hate that. I hate not knowing what I'm feeling or showing and I hate that I feed my friends bullshit because I don't know anything else right now. It's tiring and frustrating and makes me a liar and a faker and I hate all of it, which is where Allie's depiction of that irrational anger comes in. I haven't reached the point of resenting my friends yet, but it's a close call. I get frustrated easily and I'm tired all of the time and I just wish it was easier to be around people. I see them functioning normally and don't understand why I can't do that. I don't like lying to people but I don't want to isolate myself either, so I trap myself in this farce of sociability that is so so very easy to tear apart. Which is, again, why I wanted this to be public.
This is how I speak to you guys. This is how I interact with you. I try to be normal and I know that I'm not, even if you don't realise it. I'm irrational and unpredictable, and there have been times where I have to close Plurk so that that irrational hatred and anger doesn't bubble up to spew all over you when none of you deserve it. I don't want to grow to resent the people I love. And I don't want to hurt the people I love. So I try to get better, but it's nothing tangible to grasp into. There is no step-by guide to overcoming apathy. It just exists, and it's a persistent fucker.
Sometimes I don't care enough to bother.
Her description of suicidal ideation hit me really hard, because I haven't been able to explain it or understand it in a clear and coherent way. I don't want to kill myself. But I don't want to be alive either. Being alive is tiresome and frustrating and it's too much work some days. I don't have the energy for it.
I told myself to make it to my sister's wedding, because I can't ruin her wedding by up and dying right before it. That's rude. Before the wedding, I had a moment of panic where I had to sit there and wonder "Well fuck. What am I living for now?" What's the next milestone I need to reach? What's the next societal obligation I need to fulfill before I can finally stop living? My 21st birthday is in three weeks and I'm not entirely convinced it's worth the wait, because I don't know what I'm living for. What's the point?
My therapist told me that I'm not living my life, I'm living everyone else's around me, and she's absolutely right. She told me we could do good work together, but I have to be here for it, and she's absolutely right. But I don't know where I am or how to find me when I'm too tired to care about looking. She told me to call her to schedule our next appointment once I make the active decision to start living my life again, and my immediate thought was "Well, what if I don't?" What if I just choose not to? What if I die before that ever happens?
I don't think about killing myself. I think about dying. Accidents or some ridiculously outlandish scenario that would never actually happen, like becoming Iron Man and flying into a wormhole because that's the cool thing to do. Anything and everything. It's how I fall asleep at night, on the nights I actually sleep. It's what I think about when I'm driving or when I'm hanging out with my friends.
It's not "I'm sad, and want this over." It's "There is nothing for me here."
That wasteland of nothingness where I live ( Las Vegas, NV ) and it's all I see, all that's around me. It's all I think about most days. But I'm good at acting and I'm good at pretending and every now and then, it actually feels like I might really care. Maybe. Somewhere. In those moments when I feel something, I wonder if maybe I can't feel everything again someday. Not often, but sometimes I do wonder.
I hold myself together like this, through making it to the next event I'm needed at or those brief moments of thinking I might have something to look forward to somewhere in the distance. I haven't found my wrinkled piece of corn yet and I'm not entirely convinced I ever will. But this post kind of opened up my eyes by putting these things in plain terms that everyone can see and read and actually understand, which is why I wanted to post this. Because it's happening to her and it's happening to me and it's happened to a million other people, will happen to millions more.
It's not a moment of "I've been there" or "I know what you're going through," because I hate those things. They're kind and kindness is a blessing, really, but that's not why I wanted to say this. I wanted to say this just so that it can be there, to see and read and understand that this is just a fact. It's something that happens and keeps happening and that's okay. I'm not a freak or a monster or trapped in the dark alone. There's a million lost people in a space that stretches an imagination that's too tired to fathom out the walls anymore. It is, and that's important to know, to just be able to say "yes, this is happening, this is real." It's grounding, and I need things to keep me grounded. We all need things to keep us grounded. It reminds us that maybe everything isn't hopeless bullshit.
So, in some ways, this post is my shrivelled piece of corn. In some ways, you are my shrivelled piece of corn. But everything is ridiculous and nothing makes sense and for the first time, I feel okay with that. I have my feet and my toes and I'm on the earth and I'm surrounded by people and one day, that'll be something beautiful again. We all live different lives with different experiences and different struggles, but we are experiencing them at the same time. Just knowing that is important. And I think that is what keeps us alive.
So I wanted to say thank you for living with me. Even when I don't want to be.