To wake

I don’t have anything new to say and I’m not looking for any advice… I feel like I’m posting too much. I just needed to write.

Hope everyone is doing okay today. Feel free to skip over my post and rant about it in the comments if you’re not.

Earlier my mum said she feels like she hardly sees me, because she’s been out a lot. I said it isn’t ideal that I’m spending so much time in the house, but it’s okay, I’m fine… I’m starting to realise how severely it’s affecting me.

It has its upsides. I’ve been in more pain lately, but it often disappears while I’m resting. I get so confused when there are lots of voices around me or people ask me questions. When I’m alone I can think more clearly.

But it’s making my depression so much worse. Tomorrow I’m going out with family and I’m already worrying about how painful it’ll be or, even if I’m okay at the time, how damaging it’ll be afterwards. Physically I’ve taken a huge downturn lately, and my mental state is following with each passing day. Because my sleeping patterns have gone awry I fell asleep this afternoon, and woke up feeling more depressed. When I had enough energy to start standing up, I fell back down and cried and cried. It’s never for long… usually depression keeps me from crying. Ever since the urge to self-harm returned several months ago, it’s been hitting me suddenly and quite randomly. One of the reasons I did it was so I could cry again. I’m horrified at the thought of doing it again, because it would be a sign that I’m really losing control over my mind.

It’s time that I made the effort to look into the cures I was thinking of trying for ME/CFS and depression. I don’t like to admit it but one of the reasons I haven’t is that I’m terrified of it not having any effect on the ME. The other reason is that I don’t like talking about depression or anxiety in RL, especially to strangers. Meanwhile I should go to see my GP about the nausea I’ve experienced in the last couple of months. I’m worried that under-eating could be making me more ill. At the same time I dislike going to the surgery and it’d be another aspect of my life to try to understand and adapt to. It’s only a small thing, but even the thought is exhausting.

I don’t have the motivation to do much of anything at the moment. I stopped doing most of my hobbies because of the problems they caused me physically, but now I’m barely doing any smaller tasks either. I keep trying to read and write, even though they’re intensely difficult and can be exhausting. I’ve been trying to read short articles online, and I give up on most of them after a while. Part of it is dizziness, but most of it is actually understanding and retaining the information. I can’t bear my brain in its current state – the forgetfulness, the pain, the confusion. Sleep is the only relief from it.

I knew I’d be alone all evening and I thought again about phoning Samaritans. I couldn’t do it. I thought I might email them instead. Waiting for their emails in the past gave me a temporary anchor, and I think I could use one right now. More and more often, people don’t seem real to me anymore. Nothing does. I’m floating away from reality and I need something to pull me down.

I feel so guilty for being the person that I am right now. The fear that I could die without having any sense of reality, any comprehension of what I’m doing, is something I hoped would stay dormant until it faded entirely. Even if nothing else in the world mattered to me, I could never let my parents experience the sudden death of their child. I would never, ever do that to them. But there are times that my existence seems to fade away and all I can see is death. It’s the only desire, the only reality, left. It’s a force pulling on me when everything else that matters, no matter how much I try to remember it and keep it alive, fades until it hardly exists.

Today I want to scream at my mind to wake up, wake up… I would rather feel crippling pain than complete dissociation from everything I hold dear. I wish that I only had to hold those things close to me and they’d become part of my reality again. I feel like I’m descending into madness. I try to breathe, to step away from it, and sometimes I can wash some of it away… for a few precious moments.

Severe depression is ridiculously determined. I’m determined too. But I feel like I’m slipping away.

Maybe getting back into the outside air will leave it more subdued. Maybe if I keep trying, I’ll wake up. Hopefully.

To the guy who thinks I look like a chicken (haha 🙂 ), if you’re reading this: thank you for the emails.