"Jesus Christ, that's a pretty face"

As some who has suffered from depression a good portion of my life, I don’t think there is anything more frustrating than someone who just expects me to feel better as if I have control over it. I understand that most people are not familiar with depression and do not understand that it’s a disease, but when I hear people say things like “try to be positive” or “cheer up” it literally makes me so mad I cannot stand it. I am on a handful of different medicines, in therapy, and constantly doing mental exercises to try and maintain some sort of balance in my life. It is completely exhausting. So when someone thinks that I’m not doing absolutely everything in my power to feel better it kills me, it knocks me down, and hurts a lot. I’m very familiar with my disease and I’ve resorted to explaining the chemical imbalance of certain neurotransmitters that are known to cause depression. I’m not sure tactic actually helps people understand what is going on in the brain or not but it generally gets them to at least shut up.

I use twitter for several different reasons, mostly as an outlet for my crude sense of humor and for the laughs from reading everyone else’s jokes. But my favorite thing about it is that so many of the people I follow on there seem to understand depression. It’s incredibly welcoming when I tweet something real about the way I’m feeling. I have made several friends over the years I’ve spent on that website, I’ve even been lucky enough to meet several people locally and not so locally (my New York adventure last November) even. One of the friends I have, suggested that I quit putting so much energy into trying to stay positive and try to just put less energy into the negative instead. On a seemingly normal day, this helps me immensely. On a day that I consider to be a “bad day” I cannot do anything except wallow in the negative stuff in my life. My therapist calls this catastrophizing and reminds me each week that I’m extremely good at doing this. 3 prior therapists and I’ve never even been told about this type of cognitive distortion. It makes complete sense too now that I am aware of what I’m doing, even if I don’t catch myself at the moment and only can look back and realize then. To think in this manner when something negative happens is all I know. I’m learning how to stop thoughts like this, and even to prevent them from happening, but I’ve spent my entire life this way so it’s going to be a hard habit to break. I’m not going to take a pill so my mind can slip to a better place while the situation remains the same. I’m getting off the benzodiazepines completely soon, currently working on lowering dosages. In the past 7 days, I’ve only resorted to my pill box once. I’m slightly disappointed that I even did it once but it’s not a bad start considering what I was taking on a daily basis.

I guess my post today doesn’t really have a point other than to complain about people not understanding depression and a few other random thoughts. I’ve been hesitant to write anything here because I know my words make people worry at times and I’m trying to avoid that from now on. I feel very defeated in life and constantly consider the easy out of suicide but I can’t do that. I’ve tried, and then got scared, which only resulted in THE worst hospital experience of my life. I just need to find some consistency in my good days and bad days, which I feel like I’m really trying to do. I think suicide is a lingering thought in a lot of people’s minds though. But it’s just that, a thought; It’s not an option.

I’m about to turn 26, I work full time, go to school, and provide solely for myself. On paper, it doesn’t seem like I am doing much wrong. I just don’t have the ability to see the positive things in my life, I can only see myself as an enormous failure. But doesn’t the saying go “failure builds character”? I have failed miserably at a lot of things in life. Failing is pretty much the only constant thing I succeed at. I blame my ability get comfortable for my failures. I get comfortable, whether it’s in a relationship or work, and I completely forget about the goals I had or I’m incredibly show to achieve things (looking at you, college.) I’m even aware of this own fault, it’s just hard to change something once comfortability sets in. I know I’m not alone in this though, people are afraid of change. I’ve gone this entire time in life letting the bad stuff that happens consume my life and I don’t want that anymore. As sad as I am today, I feel optimistic about my ability to find something steady.