There’s this immediate conclusion that with anxiety and depression comes this innate inability to conquer it’s rigour-mortis skeleton grip on your mind. Like someone with these illness’ can only fall into a desperate state of paralysis and fear, like the only face of anxiety is that of panic attacks and cold sweats. Like depression is either all encompassing or absent. Like the true faces of failing mental health are the ones you see on the posters; people curled up on the floor of their kitchen screaming, people sitting outside in the pouring rain, people swallowing pills just in time for someone to find them and save them.
There is nothing further from the true reality of the sickness. They are a shadow, they are in your bones, in your blood — the air in your lungs and the smile on your lips while you're screaming bloody fucking murder, ”Hail Mary, Someone Save me.”
The cure is to stop breathing, once you're blue and cold - I'm sure the voices will finally be silenced enough for you to get a full night’s sleep.
I have had nights so dark and so deep that the madness that comes literally becomes real, to actually start seeing the metaphorical skeletons in your closet actually hanging in your door way, noose around their neck, I've had mornings where i walk through my house and the only thing i can see is, a catalogue of items that could carve out my veins or I could choke down with a swig of whatever i could find, circled in red — neon signs flashing “use me” “take me”. In those nights or mornings; I've gotten dressed and put on my part of society skin and walked outside and no one, and I mean literally,
no one
noticed. They all commented on the warm weather, laughed at my poor jokes and kissed my lips like the world was fine while to their left — my best friend I should have saved-sits with a bottle full of gasoline to his lips and the lighter in his other hand — smirking. You learn to blink and force it out,
It's not real — it can’t be real.
You learn to cope, however possible. Self medication has its perk’s — it works and it takes it all away, for a period of time — things are shiny and everything is numb but slowly you're dying, which means — it — wins and it-can never win.
Self Mutilation is a viable solution, I found I could open a vein and for a while at least, I could make it through.
I found I could fight my devils with a pen and ink, I found I could get through the nights with tiny little lifesavers known as Ativan and a daily dose of Wellbutrin.
The sleep would come and when I woke up twelve hours later, the sky wasn't total black and the light had washed some of the thick despair off the walls, enough to get through another day.
I find the worst thing about this plague is those who have never, experienced a darkness even close to our, average. They sit on their throne of mental health and judge how someone dying deals with living. For some fucked up reason, they've decided to assign a stigma to real help, be it prescription or self prescribed. Like somehow sticking “addict” to our person like a name tag and guilting those clambering for a chance at a decent tomorrow is beneficial to someone.
Like telling us to cheer up, get dressed and go for a walk
Hasn't fucking occurred to us.
Like we don’t do that, almost every hour of every day.
Like we don’t deserve a little helping hand.
I have often tried to explain this oxymoron of a life to someone who's never felt it, and while you wish they could FEEL it, you are endlessly grateful they never will.
I’ve tried to explain it in words that can express the emotions, but how do you explain the reason you cut yourself till you pass out from blood loss, or even just enough to take the edge off — is BETTER than the alternative your brain is screaming for you to choose. How do you explain without sounding like a drug addict justifying the fix that will kill him-
“I don’t cut for attention, it’s not a cry for help, I don't want to die, I cut or scratch because it releases the fucking voices, it quiets my demons, it takes my mind from the screaming in my head, to the burning on my skin, I can fix physical pain. I can put a bandage on a physical wound and it will give me enough of a break to shove the fucking monsters back into the box in my head to keep myself alive for another day, another hour, another minute. And that is enough of a validation for me to be selfish.”
Have you ever listened to “Hurt” — the original or the cover, it doesn't matter “I focus on the pain, the only thing thats real” - I can fix it when its real. I can’t fix something I know isn't there. I can’t fix something I can’t touch.
Now, I'm sure there are plenty reading this with shock, who are only continuing because it’s like watching a slow motion train wreck — but this is the truth, maybe I'm speaking for myself, or maybe I'm speaking for all of those in the darkness in their minds while they’re outside smiling, building empires every single day. but the reason I'm opening this box of uncomfortable thoughts and fingers tightly griping your throat, tightening every time I hit a nail on the head, is because I get asked more often than not, when I admit without fear - I am sick. I am dying but fighting myself to allow myself to live, that I am hopeful that I can beat hopelessness, that I am medicated and I encourage everyone who needs it, to do the same, that I am not addicted while I admit I am an addict, I am a fuck up but I will not let my fuck ups become my legacy, I will never let depression and anxiety be my headstone- is “how?!”
Like because I have not succeeded in my perpetual hunt for eternal sleep, somehow I don’t qualify as their idea of someone with mental health concerns. I couldn't possibly be sick because i don't seem “depressed” or “anxious” and because i have achieved success and happiness and i am so fucking proud of the things I have done right, i couldn't possibly be suffering to get up every single fucking day,
Well, I am. and I am not alone.
I promise you, I am not an exception, and in your circle of friends, we are many.