PTSD

So yesterday I felt bad…today felt even worse… I googled “suicide” looking for help and ended up on that site “Suicide – Read This First” (and it eventually led me here). On that site I read the part about how people who’ve survived suicidal periods are like other trauma survivors in that they can exhibit symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I really recognized myself so much in that. I’ve struggled with depression all my life (26 years old now) and an especially bad suicidal period about three years ago that included 1 almost-attempt just before my 23rd birthday. And I got through it and have been learning slowly better coping methods and getting stronger and better able to keep perspective on things, not defeat myself and let things overwhelm me, but I still have bad days and sometimes the smallest things can just send me into a spiral right back down to the bottom of that hole again. And I despair that I will never be totally free from this. It’s like life is walking through a mountain range, going up and down the slopes, and when you’re on top you can see from peak to peak and you know that there are going to be good times again in the distance, but when you’re in the pits between you can’t see anything but the pit you’re in and you can’t see that you will ever get back on top again, and anyway what’s the point when you will just end up back in the pit again on the other side of that mountain? I’m just hoping the pits continue to get shallower. I don’t ever want to be back again where I was three years ago. So far even my bad days have not been as bad as they were then, as unrelenting, as hopeless. I want to continue to grow stronger. I want to never forget that when I tried to write my suicide note on that worst night of all, my hand wrote on the paper the cry of all that is good within me against that darkness: “I want to live.”