A birthday should be a day
of celebration. For me it's a day of mourning. I should never have
been born. All I do is waste people's time. I often wonder if it would
be best for everyone if I killed myself. The thing is, I've been on
this earth for 21 years now and people have come to love me. If I died
now, those people would be hurt and upset. But I still think I should
kill myself. They'd get over it, and then they could carry on living
their lives without having to deal with me and my stupid,
insignificant crises.
Yes, it definitely would be best if I killed myself.
I tried once. I must be really stupid though, because it didn't work.
That's why I'm scared to try again. What if I fail again? Then they
would lock me up in a hospital where I couldn't try again.
Each morning when I wake up I wonder what shit is going to happen to
me today. I shouldn't complain though. It's only what I deserve. Some
people try to make me believe that it isn't true. They don't know me
very well. If they did, they'd see what a selfish, horrible person I
am. I don't want anyone to know, so I try to hide it.
When I am with my parents I have to pretend I'm this lovely, kind,
wonderful, intelligent person. If I told them I was depressed they'd
hate me. They'd remind me of all the wonderful things they did out of
love for me, and how ungrateful I was for accusing them of making me
this way.
The truth is, they did do lots of things to make me happy. They gave
me all the love in the world. But love isn't the cure for depression.
Happiness isn't the opposite of depression. Happiness is the opposite
of sadness. Sadness isn't depression. Sadness comes from outside. Bad
things happen and they make you feel sad. Depression comes from
within. Good things happen, yet you still feel depressed. There is
nothing in my life for me to be depressed about. But that is the
nature of the beast. It strikes without warning, and leaves you
paralyzed by its sting. Just as you believe you have reached your
lowest point, the ground crumbles from beneath your feet, and you fall
silently into the abyss below.
It takes a long time to climb back out of the abyss, and sometimes you
fall back down along the way.
Falling down is a terrifying prospect. It's cold and dark down there.
There are people who fire sharp words at you. Your whole body aches.
All you want to do is sleep, but you can't sleep. Instead you are left
alone with your dark thoughts of misery and worthlessness. Climbing
out seems like an impossible task. It's better to die now than to
waste time trying.
I was 14 the first time I fell into the abyss. I'd been teetering on
the edge for 4 years, and then I fell. I cried myself to sleep every
night. My dreams were filled with darkness, demons and death. When I
woke up my body ached all over. When I tried to move a piercing pain
would rocket through my head. I would trudge to school with 2 friends
- my only friends. Even they didn't know what was going on inside my
head. If I told them, they would have hated me. At school I tried
desperately to appear normal, but I couldn't. I was scared to speak in
case they hated me for my opinions. In lessons my mind would wander to
thoughts of loneliness and death. At home I tried to blot out the pain
by burying myself in my books. I read volumes, but never took any of
it in. My brain couldn't think about Maths homework. It was too busy
hurting to add up.
Eventually the dark clouds faded a little and I started to think that
maybe there was a point in living after all. After several months the
old me was back. I was still scared, lonely and miserable, but I
wasn't suicidal any more. My life stopped being a continuous battle
and became more like a life again.
After 4 months of terrible, unceasing pain, I finally breathed a sigh
of relief and thought to myself, "I beat it."
But I hadn't won anything. I'd scored a point in battle, but the war
was yet to come.
After 3 years of normality, the dark clouds started to clog my mind
once more. I didn't want to feel that way again, so I tried to work
out what it was that made me so unhappy. I came to the conclusion that
school was the cause. But what would my parents think if I left
school? They would hate me if I didn't do my A levels and go to
university. And I wasn't ready to face the big wide world anyway.
So I went to a new school. Things got a little better. The other kids
were welcoming. I was happy at that school. But the feeling didn't go
away, and after a year I slipped into my second depressive episode.
It was a massive blow to me. I thought I'd beaten the depression. I
hadn't imagined that it could ever come back!
I spent many hours sitting alone in my bedroom, wondering what it
would feel like to cut my wrists and see the blood spurt out. I would
hold scissors to my arm, but never dared cut. Then I started to wonder
what I would look like dead, hanging from the back of the door. I
liked that idea, but I knew it would be a terrible shock to whoever
found my lifeless body. I couldn't put my family through that. That's
the only reason I didn't do it.
It was in this state that I studied for my A levels. As the exams drew
near, I started to feel better. I could concentrate enough to distract
myself from my thoughts with Geography. I remember waiting outside the
exam room with everybody nervously jabbering at each other. The
tension would rise to the point where I could almost see it. I wasn't
nervous though. I had no ambition. I didn't see a future like everyone
else did, only darkness and more depression for the rest of my days. I
didn't have a university place hanging on my results. I told my
parents I was taking a year out to work and earn some money. Really I
was just buying time to work out how to tell them I wasn't going to go
to university at all.
The exams finished and I decided to take a short break. I would rest
and do what I wanted to do for a month. My parents said they would
support me until September, and then I would have to get a job. That
sounded like a good deal. So I read some books, went shopping, went
cycling. After a week I got bored so I decided to start looking for a
job. A fortnight later I started working at the local supermarket. I
was shy and it took a long time for me to come out of my shell.
Eventually I did. I made new friends. It was a different atmosphere to
school. It didn't matter what kind of a person you were. There were
people of different ages. I loved every moment of it, especially pay
day.
I saved up my money and bought myself a moped. I knew my parents would
be angry so I didn't tell them at first. I began to let on that I
might buy one. They weren't happy. Meanwhile, my bike was at my
friend's house, just down the road. I left my house in my car, parked
up at my friend's house, and rode off to work on my moped.
A week later I told my parents I'd bought a moped, and I was just
popping out to collect it. I loved the sense of freedom it brought me.
I felt great on it. It won me respect at work as well, which was an
added bonus. Then I crashed it. It was a stupid accident. The road was
icy and I was too close to the car in front. My bike snapped in half
and I got taken off to hospital in an ambulance. I phoned in sick from
the back of the ambulance. I was hardly hurt, but my ego had taken
rather a battering. My parents told me I was stupid for buying it in
the first place. I was secretly planning on buying another one.
We got my car started again after several months of sitting on the
driveway, pumped up the tires, and I had to drive again.
Life was great, work was great. For the first time in my entire life,
I actually felt free of the depression. It was an amazing feeling. I
would come home from work and chat away to my mum about everything
that had happened that day. I'd tell her about the stupid customers,
I'd tell her about my friend who flooded the toilets, I'd tell her all
the funny things.
Then very gradually, life stopped being quite so great. I wanted to be
alone in the evenings. I found myself getting angry at little things.
This time I knew what was happening, and I decided to see if I could
find any information on the internet that might help. I found a
website that had a lot of information, and a message board for people
who were suffering from depression. I joined up and started posting
some messages about how I was feeling. I knew I needed help, but I was
too afraid to see a doctor about it. After several months, and much
encouragement from my new online friends, I plucked up the courage to
see a doctor.
She was very sympathetic towards me and explained some of the options
for treatment that were available. I decided to try medication and she
gave me a prescription for Prozac. I researched that drug on the
internet and asked my online friends about it. I took the tablets
daily and after a while the bad feelings started to fade.
Unfortunately, so did all my other feelings. After 3 months I became
so numb that I didn't even know whether I was hot or cold. I didn't
feel hunger, so I hardly ate, except when my parents were around. I
wanted to feel something, just to make sure I was still human. The
only thing I could feel was physical pain.
One night when I was crying I started bashing my head up against the
wall. It helped to relieve some of the tension inside me. Then I
progressed to cutting. Soon the cutting and the head bashing became a
daily thing. I
needed some release.
I went back to the doctor and said the drug wasn't making me feel any
better. She referred me to the community mental health team and
prescribed me a different drug: Effexor. As I began to get my feelings
back I was able to work out what I was feeling, and it wasn't good.
The counseling didn't help and I was reluctant to try psychotherapy.
The Effexor made me feel tired, but not unbearably so. Unfortunately,
that's all it did. The doctor gave me a higher dosage, but that didn't
help either.
One day, my mum suddenly had a massive outburst at me, telling me I
was useless, I'd never make anything of myself, everybody would hate
me and I'd grow old and lonely, all the things I already believed
about myself. So I packed my bags and left. I had nowhere to go. All I
had was my car and the clothes and the books I had packed into it.
This sent me into a very deep depression. All I wanted was to die. At
one point I went driving along the motorway as fast as I could,
looking for a wall to drive into. I didn't find a suitable wall, so I
went to the local hospital and asked them to just watch me for a while
because I was going to kill myself. After a few hours I calmed down
enough to return to my friend's house where I was staying. When I got
there I had to pretend to be normal again. I said I was tired and went
to bed.
After a week I found someone who had a room she wanted to rent out,
and I went to live there. My friend says I stayed at her house for a
week. I believe her, but I only remember staying there 2 nights. I
don't know what I was feeling during that time. All I know is that I
was walking around in a daze for 3 weeks, thinking only one thing: "I
want to die."
I kept taking paracetamol, more and more each time. I didn't take
enough to kill myself, because I couldn't bring myself to let someone
find me dead in their house. Eventually the depression completely took
over and I swallowed what I thought would be a lethal dose. I woke up
the next morning covered in sick and feeling like I had been run over
by a train. My entire body hurt, so I took three times the recommended
dose of paracetamol and went off to work. I couldn't even walk in a
straight line, so I dread to think how badly I had driven that
morning!
Then I ran out of the Effexor. It wasn't working anyway, and I hadn't
registered with a doctor, so I just stopped taking it. The withdrawal
symptoms started. I felt sick and hot and my heart was racing. I kept
getting weird 'zap' feelings in my head, chest and down my arms, and
the tips of my fingers went numb. I was still overdosing on
paracetamol to stop the aches. I could hardly eat anything apart from
crisps and the occasional yoghurt. I was losing weight and getting
very weak, but I didn't care because I wanted to die anyway.
Gradually the suicidal thoughts became less and less common and I
started to force myself to eat one meal every day that I was at work.
I stopped taking the paracetamol, but I was still cutting a lot.
Over the following 6 months I recovered from that episode. I was given
2 more unsuccessful antidepressants before I found one that actually
worked without causing unbearable side effects.
My 21st birthday was the first one that I actually felt happy to be
celebrating.
I have found love. I am friends with my parents again. I have started
a new life that I love. I am immensely happy right now.
But the war is not over. I still have depression. I still feel like
people hate me. I'm still too scared to answer the doorbell. I still
take antidepressants and receive therapy for depression. And now I'm
slipping into another depressive episode and I'm very scared at what
it might do to me this time. |
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