I'm sorry but I'm going to start my brand new blog on a low note since that means it can only go up from here.
This is an incredibly difficult subject for me to discuss, especially since I've never really voiced my experiences with this condition before, that is, not while in the company of friends or family or in this case also random internet strangers!
So here goes.
Right now I am stuck in an intense battle with a major relapse of depression. I have no real reason to be depressed, I'm in the middle of trading in my crappy apartment for a brand new house with all the trimmings, I have a lovely wife, three cats and a dog, don't have a lot of friends but the ones I do have are great. The only thing that sucks is that I don't have a job and most schools don't want to deal with a 26 year old high school drop out.
I was going to say that I'm okay with that but I just have to be honest and say I'm not okay with that at all, every time I get even the smallest hint of rejection it feels like my heart decides it wants out and tries to escape through my feet taking all of my organs along for the ride.
This is what makes this so hard, I have to be completely honest about this because otherwise there's no use in me writing all this down, a great weapon in the war on depression is acknowledging that it's there and that it's trying to eat away at every last bit of emotion you feel.
Maybe I should tell you a bit more about how I ended up like this. Don't worry, I'm giving you a run down of the important parts not writing my autobiography.
This all really started when I was 12, I can't be very specific about then since I only figured out later that I've had trouble with dark thoughts and bouts of sadness and lethargy since around that age.
The following few years were troublesome, starting off fine with good grades and ending up dropping out of school completely. I couldn´t be bothered with doing my homework and during class I would either not be paying attention or I would be getting into arguments with my teachers, I understood everything they tried to teach me but I just found myself unable to care.
I was bored and no one managed to find anything to do for me that I found compelling, not that they really tried. One of my teachers commented that they all noticed I was bored and would have been better at another school years ago, he cared only mention this on the day I dropped out.
So yeah, I gave up, second dumbest thing I´ve ever done, first being the time I chose to go to that school.
What happened next wasn´t a pretty sight, I spent three years on going out and wasting time. I was never into any real drugs even though there were enough options for me to get any drug I wanted through friends and acquaintances. Alcohol was my drug of choice and I used it a lot, I´m very thankful that it never took over my life, I wasn´t a slave to alcohol, it was a slave to me, I abused it as much as I could. I was doing volunteer work at a music venue which earned me free drinks so I was drunk as much as possible, trying to forget how shitty the situation that I got myself into was, again, I wasn´t addicted to alcohol, which sounds like a lie but after a few years of being drunk I decided to stop drinking all together, I can´t say that this was a good decision.
I traded substance abuse for self abuse, cutting myself or getting myself hurt to get the rush of pain and endorphins was the best feeling I had my entire life, this opened a door for a real addiction, thinking about that feeling now still makes my fingers itch, unlike being addicted to drugs it´s impossible to take away the tools of addiction when it comes to self harm which turns your own body into a weapon that can cut and bruise your body at the flick of a wrist.
When I was 18 I first reached out to my parents and my family doctor to say I was having mental problems, I started the process of going into therapy and immediately gave up after the first conversation I had with my first therapist, who treated me like a child that was just acting out instead of someone with serious mental issues.
After this came the two darkest years of my life so far, I somehow managed to stop harming myself, not because I came to terms with my mental health but because I no longer wanted to just harm myself. I wanted to destroy myself in every sense of the word, I wanted to die. The only thing that stopped me from killing myself was my fear of death, I know this sounds dumb but I really wanted to die and at the same time was too scared of dying to actually do something about it myself.
It was summer, I was 19 and something happened that made me want to get help. I met someone that eventually became my girlfriend and years later she would become my wife. I had a reason to get help. I restarted the process of going into therapy, making sure I got a therapist that wouldn´t treat me like a child. I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and Schizotypal Personality Disorder, the person that analysed my test results also thought I was pre-psychotic which my therapist thought was bogus. I refused to take medication because I didn´t want to become dependant of a pill which made getting better a lot harder but eventually I managed to finally be happy again.
We moved into the apartment I´m in right now a few years later, and I got a job at a videostore and all was well for a few years.
After working at the videostore for two and a half years I got bored, I couldn´t go on anymore and I had to quit, where I was full of energy when I started I was now tired and annoyed, the job took a lot from me and I could feel it start to eat away at me so there was no other options left other than moving on.
That was almost two and a half years ago now.
At this point I have been pretty much free from depression apart from the occasional dip, but it never lasted longer than an evening.
In the past few months leading up to moving to the new house though I´ve been experiencing these dips more often.
And then there was this one dip that I couldn´t manage to get out of, in fact, I´m still in it. The thing about depression is that there is no real cure, you have to learn to live with it and sometimes it can pop up without any warning.
In this case though I had ample warning but simply ignored it, I didn´t tell anyone and this only made things worse, I´ve been hiding how I was doing for a few months now and I´m tired of pretending I´m fine, I´m not fine, I´m not okay and I´m not doing well at all. I am going to get better though, yes sometimes I think I might be better off dead but I also think killing myself is a waste of time, at least if I stay alive I can see what the universe still has in store for me.
I just wish I didn´t have to feel so shitty.
It feels good to get all of this off my chest.
I will be filling this blog with stuff from now on so come back again some time!
