Experience has lead to an illogical lack of empathy.

I know what it’s like to want nothing more than to disappear. I know what it’s like to constantly think about death. I know what it’s like to constantly think of how easy it would be just to leave this life for good. I know what it’s like to feel so numb and empty that the only way to feel anything at all is to drag a blade across your skin. I know what it’s like to switch off the lights at night only to have your mind filled with the dark thoughts you’ve been avoiding all day. I know what it’s like to avoid going to bed for that very reason. I know what it’s like to look in the mirror and feel disgusted, to want to become nothing at all but a walking skeleton. I know what it’s like to cry over how nobody’s noticed how bad you are and to not know whether you want to carry on pretending. I know what it’s like to pretend you’re okay, to sit there with a blank expression while inside you are shattering into billions of pieces, more so every second. I know what it’s like to feel completely imprisoned in your own mind, to know how illogical your dark thoughts are but to entertain them nonetheless, to feel so weak in comparison to the darkness that becomes your best friend and also your worst enemy I know what it’s like to be tired all the time because you can’t sleep and because the depression feels so heavy and because it takes so much energy just to get up and face the day even a little bit. I know what it’s like to feel so alone that you feel like nobody cares and that nothing matters so you may as well just give in. I know what it’s like to be constantly fighting battles with the parts of you that crave self-destruction. I know what it is to become the part of you that craves self destruction. I know what it’s like to feel like nothing will ever get better, that you will never get better and that this is all there will ever be.

I know what it’s like to be this way and I know what it’s like to fight this battle and eventually have possibly won it. I have been there. I have been through so much in the last few years and I don’t think I will ever be able to tell anybody any of it and I don’t know how to feel about that.

I know all of this, and yet I find it so hard to be kind and understanding and to offer comfort to people going through these things I am now mostly past. It doesn’t make sense, I should be able to respond to people’s sadness with compassion and empathy, I should be supportive and I should be loving and understanding. I should be able to help them feel less alone and to offer hope and to talk about how I eventually defeated the darkness and how just doing small things can make a huge difference, how you can gradually find hope and begin to slowly see the light again, that it’s different for everyone but that if they are prepared to give it their everything and to not be afraid of failing, they will find their way out of the darkness as well. I believe that and I think that and that is what I want anybody struggling who is reading this right now to know. You will be okay and eventually all of the fighting will be worthwhile, try your hardest not to give up and accept that it will be hard at first but you will make it. Eventually, you can defeat your depression and you can learn to be okay again. Nothing is impossible. I believe that, I really do, I just can’t find it in myself to say these things to the people I know and love and want desperately to help. I just can’t. I don’t know why this is and I find it really odd, I want to help but I just can’t offer the comfort required, I physically can’t really talk about my experiences and I guess a part of me really doesn’t want to. I don’t know why, I just can’t.
Maybe it’s just that part of me thinks that talking about it will make it all the more real, that telling people how desperate I was to die this time last year will possibly reinforce that, that I’d have to stop talking about how ‘sad’ I was and how much I ‘wanted to die’ and I would have to start using the proper terms, like how I was ‘depressed’ and ‘suicidal’ and kept thinking about ‘committing suicide’. Ugh, there is nothing I hate more than the phrase ‘committing/committed suicide’ and it makes me shudder even now that I’ve sort of got past those times. I hate labels and official terms and I hate the thought of talking about how low I was.

I just need to get better at being compassionate and kind and understanding and I just don’t see why I have so much difficulty in truly expressing emotion. I don’t know what’s wrong with me and a part of me does still think that maybe things would be better if I wasn’t around.