Lost my coping mechanism.

I’m new so I’m sorry if I am not doing this right… Can I complain here? I’ve only read a little.

I had a hideous upbringing, a hideous adolescence… I joined the US military to escape home…

My very best friend in the whole world was someone I met online, actually. For years he was my confidant. Long story short, we met, fell in love. Much as I fled my home state, I up and fled my home country and moved to the other side of the world. Got into an excellent school, an excellent programme, doing all right. It was a struggle doing it, but everyone seemed better for it (I don’t have contact with the vast majority of my family and have only a couple of friends who lived all over the world anyway, as our hometown was literally just that bad that everyone with sense ran screaming as soon as they could.)

We broke up, which devastated me, and him (I don’t understand either) but he’s still my best friend, though this leaves me rather on my own in a still somewhat new country. I don’t want to leave… the concept of going home makes me feel ill. The idea of staying here is terrifying.

I’ve been depressed in the past, it runs in my family (as do schizophrenia and suicide) but I’ve never quite felt so hopeless in my life. I lost roughly 9 kilos in the span of a month, have a horrible time falling asleep but am still extremely reluctant to leave bed. Basic hygeine has gone to hell, I basically just cry until I dry heave. Sometimes go days without eating, fainted a few times.

I find the easiest way to get to sleep is to plan suicide. So many plans. It’s sick, sort of a fantasy the way other people lovingly dream up their wedding day. My exes mother sent me a beautiful new belt last week that probably costs more than my rent, so I turned it into a noose and attached it to the crossbar in my wardrobe, and tested to see if it would hold my weight. Now I just sort of stare at it. At night, when I’m trying to sleep, or during the day, when I’m crying myself sick, the only thing that soothes me is that I can die if I choose,  and not have to do any of this any more.

I recognise that suicide is poor planning. To that end, I did seek and receive the services of a therapist, who has since referred me to a psychologist I have not met yet (this isn’t my first time in the depression rodeo though so I am somewhat sceptical) and broke down and asked my physician for antidepressants. He gave me Zoloft 3 days ago. I am feeling somewhat better and don’t know if it’s the brand new drug that shouldn’t kick in for weeks somehow, or a placebo effect, or a clever mindgame from the physician who explained that the more depressed you are, the quicker it works.

I lost my coping mechanism from the past. I used to laugh. I laughed through and over years and years of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. Being raised in the sort of squalor pictured in Deliverance. Being a social pariah. Past therapists would applaud my coping mechanism. But I’m not laughing anymore. I’m nearly 30 and I think my laughbox broke. I look haunted.

My ex/bff (lol) said one of the things he admired in me was my absolute refusal to quit, always getting what I wanted or needed, and fighting like a mad dog for it, even if sometimes I barely made it by the skin of my teeth. That drive hasn’t only guttered, but I feel like the embers of whatever fire I contain(ed) are being rained on.

Not sure what the point of this was but writing it felt like a relief.