I recently read an article about a therapy group for depressed people who had all attempted suicide at some point. The breakthrough question for them was, “If your goal was to be just as miserable as possible, what would you do?” Most of them listed things like not getting enough sleep, or isolating themselves from everyone… the list goes on, but the point is, they listed things they already do. But now they saw those “coping mechanisms” for what they really were: things that were actively making their condition worse.
I read that article at 2:00 AM, asked myself, am I TRYING to be miserable tomorrow? And it was easier than usual to put my phone down and fall asleep. Even my intrusive “lying down” thoughts about meaninglessness and existential dread were easier to suppress when I framed them as things I’d think about to purposefully make myself feel as awful as possible.
sibling relationships are so strange… like i love you. you will never understand me in a way that matters. we are the same person in drastically different ways. we are sewn together. we don’t talk. we are attached at the hip. you wish i was never born. can i call you. let’s eat together. i forgive you. etc
i don’t have enough photos of you on my phone to make one your contact picture. we got the same tattoo completely by coincidence. why do you always get to be mario. i love the meals you cook. we live in different universes. you can stay at my house if you need. we have never been friends. you are more important to me than anyone on this earth
I don’t fear failure . I actually fear success and happiness. Understanding this concept came with my self love journey , now I am able to stop my self destructive behavior when things are going well . I accept love , I accept when my brain set big goals .
How it makes me feel ? It feels like being aware that I’m vulnerable , It’s uncomfortable for sure but I know it’s just temporary , it’s just because I’m not used to welcome these feelings
eventually you realize you don’t want to die. you just don’t want to live the life you’re living. and slowly you try to create a life you want to live. just gotta start there.
no one needs to add “sounds fake but ok”, “no”, “well, not me”, “impossible”, etc. to this post. and i’d rather you not.
one day you think: I want to die.
and then you think, very quietly: actually. actually. I think I want a coffee. a nap. a sandwich. a book.
and I want to die turns day by day into I want to go home, I want to walk in the woods, I want to see my friend, I want to sit in the sun
I want a cleaner kitchen
I want a better job
I want to live somewhere else
I want to live
The thing to understand is that Depression
Even When It Is Trying to Kill You!
Is Defensive.
Your brain exists to preserve you; it’s just Dumb, and how it goes about “preserving” is determined by evolution’s ‘Good Enough’ meat-and-chemistry mechanisms rather than a firm grasp of biology.
You know how, stuck atop a burning building, ppl will sometimes throw themselves off in a vain hope of surviving? That’s what depression-driven suicide is. You are under THAT amount of stress, often sustained for a FAR longer time. Your brain only understands “Stress”: it doesn’t know causes, it doesn’t know Events, and it only has the one set of instinctive ‘extreme measures’ to fall back on. I made things SO hard on myself for SO Long conceiving of Depression as a Fight I had to Win, rather than a chronic illness in need of my understanding and careful management.
Help your brain. Nurse it. Ask yourself where it hurts and why. Recognize that the desire to die is a symptom, an injury, and not your ‘Truth’. Try to calm it, Try to endure: It WILL Pass. As perverse as it sounds, your desire to die is an expression of how PASSIONATELY you want to get away from the pain tormenting you; of how MUCH you want to LIVE. PLEASE Live!
psychiatric disabilities are such bullshit. like what do you mean im not going to reach my full potential just because my brain said no.
like this post is flippant but every day i have to contend with the grief that comes from knowing that, actually, there are things i want to be and do that i simply can’t. that the high achieving version of myself that everyone saw in high school was never real. that the goals i set for myself were always out of my reach. like how am i supposed to be content with the scraps that im able to cling to? how am i supposed to navigate life in a world that’s actively hostile to me? how am i supposed to build a career when most people aren’t willing to do the work to look past my symptoms in my personal life, never mind my professional one? how am i supposed to build a life at all when all of my energy is going towards surviving my own fucking self? like?? it’s not fucking fair. and im so lonely. and so tired. genuinely how am i supposed to get over this.
I had a mental breakdown in college. The contributing factors had been there for a long time (my current dx is ocd and bipolar), but that breakdown shook me. Echoes of it persist. I have to creep around it in certain situations to keep from hurting myself again. It closed down entire pathways of possibilities for my future.
I think of it like a sports injury. Like what if I busted my knee playing soccer or frisbee or something.
It would never be normal again. If I did nothing about it, it would be disabilitating. Therapy and medication would help, but flare-ups are always a concern, and you can’t treat it like you did before.
And so, grief.
I grieve the loss of normal. Sometimes I miss being ignorant and carefree so much it hurts.
Mental health difficulties are severely stigmatized and misunderstood, especially in the states, but I offer you my sympathy. You are not alone.
