TheOpenRoad

I’ve been thinking about sex a lot lately. I’m supposed to sleep with a guy in two weeks. I have issues with sex and sexual acts. Specific acts are no go areas. But sex in general is a very serious affair (pun intended). I’ve come a long way. I’ve changed the way I think. But the hardest to change has been ‘sex is about pleasure’ to ‘sex is an expression of love’. When a partner closes their eyes, disappears into their own head, when it’s silent, or we don’t kiss, it’s about pleasure. I feel alone when it’s about pleasure, even if I love the guy. I disappear into my head when I feel alone during sex. But I can never just say stop, or kiss him, or just say something to bring it back in hand. I’m programmed from that point on. I have to finish what I started so I’m not weak. There’s also a mild apprehension that the name of it will be rape if he doesn’t stop when I say it. Men don’t always think straight when aroused. Ok I tried to express what this specific man means to me, and why it’s different, but I wrote a lot of crap. I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing. I don’t know if any of this is worth it. Everything I tried to say sounds like fiction. I can’t think when it comes to him.

Anyway, in other news I didn’t fail greatly today. I’m only mildly buzzed. And I ran so long I pulled a muscle. I haven’t smoked, but I did substitute coffee for it, which wasn’t any more comfortable. I’ll take it as a win. It’s day 0 again, but by a smaller margin.

thousands of bees looked to me with trusting eyes

I failed. I failed. Everything I wanted to achieve today. As a child I would tell myself it was my circumstances. I was unhappy and it was the place that I was forced to remain in. Change is good. Kickstarts something new. A new beginning, a new me. But I’m always alone in the fresh chapter. And I don’t think I can fix this by myself. There’s no one to please. Nobody to perceive me. Nothing stopping me. Nobody who knows me. Everywhere there are temptations. That’s the window I sit at. The smell of weed at midnight. The incessant giggling of three stupid teenagers. The loud couple next door. The click of a lighter. The knot in my belly. The stranger in the mirror. The simple habit. My hands shaking from the amount of nicotine coursing through my veins. It can’t substitute. I want to escape and I want it with the same frequency life hurls transgressions through me.

It’s weird. I want to be home all of a sudden. I feel violent. I thought it was the 30 hour mark. But I just figured it out. Problems were simple as a kid. You did something wrong and an adult punished you. You were discouraged. You never did it again. I want someone to beat the living shit out of me and I’ll never touch it again. Problem solved. Keeping it together is tough. Makes me appreciate my parents’ efforts.

I’m going to try harder tomorrow. For now, it’s day 0 again. Here goes nothing.

God give me the strength to see this through.

I haven’t been feeling good of late, and there’s nothing in my control that I can attribute it to. It makes me feel helpless. Which in turn makes me think about God. God is a slippery slope, I feel. I have never understood how people can harbour such grand beliefs and continue to go about their daily lives. If there are Gods, and another, better world, and an afterlife, or souls and rebirth, doesn’t all that is holy transcend the monotony of taking out the garbage? How can you labour when you believe this world is vulgar and incomplete? I’m sure that’s the reason suicide is sin nearly everywhere, but even if the way out isn’t suicide, how can people be religious and yet take life so seriously?

Well back to what I can make sense of. I can’t focus on anything. I need my head right now, it’s a crucial time in my life, but I cannot think clearly about anything. I don’t want to get out of bed. I don’t want to read a word. I don’t want to think. The only thing I can do with vigour is daydream. I’m dissatisfied with this living again. My world is too small. I want to see lands greater than I can imagine. I want work I believe in. I want to be quiet for days and weeks. I want to see birds, forget about cars and cellphones and air pollution. I want to go months without seeing another human being. I want to know nobody in the entire world. Have no one to answer to. I want, just for a short time, to be absolutely free. This is what kills me every time.

I never mastered mindfulness. My own mind betrays me with every thought.

I feel ill. I don’t want to move an inch. I’d like to just doze here for the rest of my life. I’ve fallen into a pit again.

When people hurt me, I withdraw. I’m not much good at talking or fighting. I’m seeing that my way of dealing isn’t really effective. So I’m trying to do it differently. But fuck, talking shit out with people is so distasteful. I realize that I don’t even like the people I’m ‘close’ to.

Anyway, it’s a new month. I’ve slept well. I’m going to try and do it differently today and stay out of bed till dark. The trick is keeping busy.

I don’t know how to feel joy without some degree of suicidality. Beauty inspires joy in me, but it’s always accompanied by a sense of my insignificance in contrast. And that always makes me want to lose myself in the greatness of all things indifferent to me.

Yesterday I saw the sea. Somehow, the longer I wait before I see it again, the smaller it seems in my mind. That is, until I see it again. It makes me want to drown in it. The ocean is so incomprehensibly large that when it swallows me I will be nothing. It will be as though I never existed. I often want to be nothing.

I grew up by the sea. As children, we walked among wave breakers and played silly childhood games and caught crabs we had no business catching. We would drink copious amounts of seawater and make ourselves so sick it was the least our mothers could do to excuse us from school. I want to be a kid again. 

The embankment we would play on is now empty. They don’t allow people on it anymore. Half the lanes of the road along the embankment are dug up. They’re repairing the damaged bits. Change is hard. Loss is harder. If it were up to me I would erase the embankment from all of time. 

I have been doing fairly well for a considerable time. But right now, I don’t feel good. I feel silent again. Locked inside myself, unthinking, unfeeling, angry. I don’t have the will to do right now. I have been failing at too much, and I have also been succeeding at much, which is seeming less important to me by the minute.  

I have had a poor day. I haven’t slept, and I haven’t done enough for myself. I feel slow again, like I could disappear. I want to smoke something that will make it go away. I want my days to be easier. 

Maslow listed self-actualization at the top of his pyramid. Self-actualization requires self discipline. I lack self discipline. Why am I taking two steps back for every step forward? What need have I not yet fulfilled? I don’t know. I could list several from random levels on the pyramid, and so I don’t know. I’m tired, and I feel bad, and I don’t know.

When I’m feeling good, life goes by too fast for my taste, even though I don’t realize it at the time. It’s the little things that get to me. Bouncing my leg till my foot is sore. The relief of bed. The constant escapes I need in greater and greater values. How isolated I feel when I’m quiet. And times like these when I’ve burnt out. 

I dislike myself for not being able to stop doing things that are clearly harmful to me. I want control over my thoughts and actions. But no matter what, I seem to fall into the same familiar patterns over and over and over. I don’t know how to break out. And no matter how much I struggle with, I’m always loath to spend my hard earned money on glorified grandmothers (therapists). 

I want to be hungry. I want things to go slower. I don’t want to oscillate between this and a racing heart. 

Sometimes I take comfort in certain people, and other times I beat myself up for doing so. Sometimes I cry for certain reasons and other times I don’t need to cry for those exact same reasons. Sometimes I die inside from the beauty of sunlit water, and other times, I can’t even see the water because I’m so cloudy inside. I want more sunlight in my life. I don’t feel anything right now. And this is only a fraction of the great big cliff there was inside my ribcage at my worst. I don’t want to go back to that. And to think I had no idea. 

I feel unheard. Like a fly on the wall. I don’t like feeling like a fly on the wall. It makes me go someplace else in my mind, where I’m not real. But I have no idea how to escape all these situations I’m continually placed in where I’m no one. When I’m no one, I feel dangerously invisible. Like I could stab myself in the palm and neither the stabber nor the stabbed would be me. 

When I came back to this site a few months ago, I felt out of place. I felt like what I was feeling wasn’t as bad as the other people here. Today I’m in a much better place, thanks to various efforts. And I realize that the way I felt then was so very low, I have no idea why I’d ever categorize that as okay. But you know, back then, I had been depressed so many years I didn’t remember what it felt like to really be okay. I had nothing to compare it to. And perhaps the reason people call this place im in right now ‘normal’ is because they don’t have something as bad to compare it to. Because this isn’t normal this is extraordinarily good. So tried and tested, it’s true what they say, you can’t have light unless you’ve seen darkness. And vice versa.

All of a sudden after speaking to an old friend I’m back in this feeling. I’m weaker than I was. I’ve never wanted something so bad before. Fuck, this feeling is everything I was trying to avoid.

I know if I cry now I’ll fuck this whole day up. I’m cornered, threatened, and then suddenly my attacker disappears into thin air, and I’m alone, sobbing, feeling stupid.

All of a sudden I want to escape again. I want so bad to move away from here. Move east this time.

Addictions are really tough to deal with. Once an addict, always an addict. You never get to casually enjoy it again. Somehow, every time you try moderation, you’re hurtling down at breakneck speed again. Why does it have to be like this? I wish so bad it were different. I want a second chance.

I’m feeling so goddamn horrible. I want to escape. To anywhere.

When I talk, I feel like people can’t understand me. It always surprises me when someone answers me. When I’m by myself I pretend to be deaf and dumb. I manage to go days without saying a word. One time I pretended to be deaf and dumb at work, and didn’t say a thing to my colleagues all four months I was there. That was so relaxing. Nothing to worry about. Just myself and an animal whose thoughts to hear. It was a very unique experience. If I move I can replicate it.

I’m feeling low, and I want a pill to make it go away.

This place is good for getting my feelings out. Finding someplace in my head that’s empty of these thoughts.

So, I had a good day yesterday. I went out of my way to make something different about it. And I succeeded. Although what I did was bad for my sleep schedule, it was good for me as a person. I really enjoyed myself. I felt happy doing all that.

I’m ill today, and I haven’t been able to get a lot of work done, but I’m feeling a bit better now…so maybe I’ll start? I really should. Time management has never been one of my strong suits.

Even though getting off medication has been hard, work in the right direction has been making me feel better. I’m ready to make more efforts now in all aspects of my life. With my personal life, my professional life, and…I called my mother. It didn’t go great. But I didn’t expect it to, and I’ve still got a date with her in a week. That’s definitely progress how she wants to see me.

I’ve always been conscious about my scars. I don’t swim because then they’ll be visible. My whole wardrobe is geared towards keeping them out of sight. So, yesterday I saw this guy outside, working at this construction site, surrounded by other guys in hardhats and a couple of bosses maybe. He was wearing a sleeveless shirt, and his whole left arm was covered in these thick white scars. All paralell from shoulder to wrist. No way that was an accident. He did that to himself. And he really wasn’t bothered by all the questions he had certainly been asked by all those guys. That was inspiring. It made me feel like I have nothing to be ashamed of either. Maybe I can do something different in the near future. It made me feel accepted. Hopeful for better times.

Overall, it’s been a good day in all aspects but one, and I plan to fix that this evening. Even though I’m shivering sick, I feel good. It seems getting better from depression doesn’t just rest on antidepressants. It’s more about the effort I put in. Meds make it easier to put in that effort. But if I can get off my ass and stop dissociating, I can help myself even without them.

On a positive note, I’m doing pretty good. I’ve managed to start sleeping better without pills. I’ve got more on my hands, and that’s keeping me busy, and my mind off rumination and despair and whatnot. I’ve taken on a new project at work, voluntarily, which is a first. I’m making a lot of efforts to keep myself from slipping, and the better they work, the better I feel about myself.

My medication has worn off almost completely. The initial period was the worst I’ve felt in a long time. But things seem to be picking up again these past two days. I’ve found it harder to function without, but every time I want to go back, I remind myself of why I stopped, and that’s working for now. I’m pretty tired in general. Sleepy. I’ve rediscovered an old part of me the meds were masking, and that’s made me feel like myself again. This brief respite I had from myself has served me well. It keeps me sane. Because I know that it’s possible to feel that ok again. And that’s what keeps me going with all these efforts to do better. The knowledge that there is a way out.

I’ve found a new dynamic with the closest person in my life. It’s better than the one we had before. At least for me.

I’ve found that I look forward to working on my new project every day. It’s a really refreshing way to feel. Like I’m the old me again.

I’m going to keep trying to feel better. I’m glad that I feel good today, and I hope it’ll be the same tomorrow.

I’m down and out. I’m so angry with the people in my life. With so many people. Why do they think they have a say in my life just because I’m a woman? This is the only drawback I see to this place. Generally I’m quite a patriot. I’d like to be part of the government so I can help precipitate a change.

After a recent meeting with a dog I hadn’t seen in a while, I found myself enjoying her company. It made me want to adopt one. They’re work, but maybe it’s worth it. They’re more permanant than most life partners.

I’m really tired and I wish I could leave this city. I miss life before coronavirus. I wish it’d just stop. That somebody would step up and handle things like an adult. Before there were vaccines, the world was talking about ‘who will get it first’. Discussing all these ethical, humanitarian solutions. And all the while governments were already deciding who would get it first. The rich, as always. This pandemic seems more like a mismanagement disaster to me than a natural one. Sure it’s manmade. Not by China, but by governments who were all too worried about themselves to take a stand.

I want to die today because I am absolutely spent. Rejection tastes bitter every time. And somehow I’ve never learned to swallow it. I’m tired of my days here. I’m tired of myself. I want to look forward to something, but all I think when I wake up is of all the distasteful events to come. I do wish I had nothing more to do than to sleep and that I could sleep for as long as I’m awake. I wish I could skip tomorrow. This whole year. I wish I had a pill to make me lighter. That’s on my agenda tomorrow then. It’s something to look forward to. I have no solutions but substances. I wish I had time to be. I don’t know. I wish there were more people I loved. I just can’t do what’s good for me. It’s always bad decisions.

I’m washed out. Wrung. I seriously don’t know how everything got so shitty so fast. It felt good to run my mouth. I feel hateful towards him. I want to make him feel just as trash as he’s made me. But I doubt anything I do would matter. He doesn’t give a shit. And I still do. How fucking sad for me.

He’s just tired of me. He’s forgotten. He doesn’t want to be reminded. He hurt me over and over this last year. Until everything I said to him was bullshit. There was never anything to say or he could make me fall to the pitch dark again. I guarded everything. How ironical. I am the fucking secret. I want to hurt him. Show him how he’s so small a balled up person he’ll never uncurl again.

He doesn’t care anymore. He doesn’t want anymore. Doesn’t feel the same way. I guess I should’ve known he was never one to surrender themselves to another. He didn’t say the things he should have. He just didn’t care enough to.

Yeah and sitting somewhere in this fucking mess is me and my stupid, pulsating heart.

I am 100% having a hard time. I am 100% getting high. Even though it’s not the kind of high I want. Just waiting for it to hit.

I cried for the first time in months. Sad part is even that left me frustrated. I couldn’t do more than leak out a few tears and be unable to feel anything. It’s always like this. Then I wanted to cut. Then I clocked out. Nope. Can’t deal with that right now. So pills it is. I just wish I’d had the good sense to keep some melatonin handy for this. Wake up in better times. Instead I get its polar opposite. But anything to stop being me right now. I know I’ll wonder what the fuck is wrong with me when this reality sets in. Then maybe I’ll do this all over again. I don’t know. I thought I had this, but I’d forgotten what it feels like to be as despondently suicidal as I do tonight. Coming down from this break just makes the comparison a hundred times more stark. Maybe I should just keep a gun handy too. I’ll never have to go through these cycles again. Just one rock bottom will be enough.

I sometimes feel absolutely immobilized. I have no words for anything. Not even in my own mind. It seems to me like the world is just too full of words. Everybody always talking. Writing rubbish. It’s too much. And most of it is absolute crap. The thought makes me feel helpless. Animal. Like there’s no worth to my putting more words out in the world. I’m a zero at communication to begin with. I never got it. Then I saw it differently. Then I could be myself on paper again. At least I have that.

I also realize something that’s difficult to admit. I’m lonely as fuck. The pandemic has made it so I am quite literally alone in the entire world. Before, I had the work girls. I fucking hated them, but I think I miss them now? It’s pathetic. Of course, my family. I’m coming to the conclusion that I want to talk to my brothers. I would not admit to them in a million years that I fucking miss them. I miss them so goddamn much. Wow, looks like it’s hitting me. I’ve got a good idea in store for tomorrow. More fucking pills.

Taking half my dose and yeah this whole evening I’ve just been slowly dissociating. Coming back to this. The weird part is, some small part of me felt relieved. The world was too fast. I was always getting up and moving around. God and now I’m back to the old me. This is who I feel like I am. I feel so crappy right now. It’s like coming down from a two month high. I’m worn out. I want weed. I won’t be able to sleep tonight. Why did I feel like this was a good idea? If not for fear of sexual dysfunction I wouldn’t keep going. But I can’t feel for shit and I read this can last. I hope to God it gets better. This is going to wreck my relationship. It’s like being locked in a cage. You can see the world outside but you’re trapped. I can feel aroused but I can’t climax.

I am absolutely ravaged today. The roller coaster is hurtling down. But I’m really glad I tried this. It gave me a small window into what life can be. I couldn’t remember a time when I ever felt so easy. I’d forgotten this was possible. And just imagine, normal people feel like that all the time! I finally understand how someone can call life beautiful and not understand suicide. I can’t fathom why people ever complain if that’s the reality they live in. This has given me hope. I think I might make it now that I know what my problem is. Now that I know what my aim should be.

My appetite is returning, and I can take pleasure from food once again. It’s a two sided blade but it made me feel good to enjoy a meal.

I am tired. But tonight is the most coherent I’ve managed to be in weeks. My thinking has slowed down, I can make sense of things again. Maybe that’s good, maybe it’s bad. But this is normal. This is my comfort zone. That’s the hard part. I have my usual attention span now. That makes me feel very valid. Human.

The most relieving part of this is how my thoughts have slowed down. These past few weeks, my head was bursting with every corner of my existence. My mind was racing a mile ahead of my body. It was just too much stimuli. Too fast.

For the reason I came here in the first place, I don’t think I’ll ever part with the idea of suicide. Even at my highest point, I didn’t mind oblivion. I wasn’t certain what I’d do if I had a gun in my hand. But I can say, at my highest, I also didn’t mind the idea of rebirth. I remember thinking how beautiful it would be to become someone new over and over. But at the core of my being, I know the peace nothingness will bring me is unparalleled. And I have absolutely no misgivings about receiving it at any given point. Just to not exist.

It felt calming to write. Like I’ve achieved a place between the highs and lows. But unfortunately I can’t escape the real world forever. This illness really gives you a strange perspective. I’ve never met a depressed person that wasn’t escapist. Suicide isn’t the only out it’s just the final one.

When I’m in this place, I feel alone. Alienated from everybody else walking around. I have no real wants except for escape. I’d like to escape my physical environment. Move somewhere new. That’s why I move so much. But I’ve found that doesn’t work. I need an entire escape. Not just from whatever place on the map, but from every day. The people around me. The world we’ve built. The stores I shop in. The meaningless work I do in order to shop in those stores. I need to be in a different reality. Think about rain and how it will affect me. Walk in the sun all by myself, somewhere real. Where the world is real. Where everything you do matters. I want to concern myself with more than ledgers and profits. I want the weather to make or break my day. I want a hot meal to make me the happiest woman alive. Simplicity.

There’s a pyramid of needs that some psychologist devised, I forget who. The theory goes that you can’t be concerned with needs higher up before you fulfill the ones below them. Well at the bottom there’s what you’d expect, food, shelter clothing. Then there’s safety. Then commmunity. Love and belonging. Then self respect. And last self actualization. I feel like most of us are born somewhere ahead of the start line. The unlucky ones lower down, and the luckier ones higher. But that kind of creates a disconnect with us in ourselves. How can you appreciate where you are if you’ve never experienced the relief of fulfilling your basic needs? The simpler ones? How tiring is it to forever attempt to fulfill some greater purpose, some higher goal than the most crucial ones? I just don’t know what it’s like to be alive. I can’t appreciate life because I’ve never worked to keep mine. Maybe that’s what I need to fix this hole in myself. To feel the accomplishment of achieving the most simple things. To think about life in different terms than money. I haven’t felt like this in many years. The last time I wanted this so bad was the early years of my depression. This feels like hope. Or maybe a worn cycle doomed to spin a ful circle again.

Sometimes I wonder at this from an evolutionary point of view. There’s no doubt about it, there are millions of people thinking about offing themselves. That kind of defeats the purpose of biological life. It’s like one big kick in the face to every evolutionary instinct ever developed. So maybe all these suicidal people are just another of evolution’s randomizations that is going to fail and die out in greater populations. Or maybe it’s the brilliant evolutionary answer to population control. Are we only suffering to be failed experiments? Or is there a greater ploy? I don’t know, both arguments make me feel outdated. Invalid. History.

Well, this has gone on too long.

I’ve got a diminished ability to make sense these days. I see the world like an animal might. In images and ideas. As a result I don’t know how to put things in words sometimes. I don’t even know myself what I’m thinking. So I sit down to write to clear my head. To make some sense to myself.

Right now I’m considering suicide for some really wild reasons. I keep playing the scene in my head. I really want it. To suddenly stop, be gone in a second. I want to be with dead eyes. Bloody, unaffected, and non existent. I try to keep my thoughts in check by telling myself I’m romanticizing it, but I don’t think I am. That’s exactly what happens when you die. You vacate your eyes and you stop. There is no more time. Like sleeping but easier.

I don’t know how to make the decision. Nothing particular has happened in my life that might justify giving up now after hanging on all these years. I’m not even particularly depressed. There is just no end in sight. I’m always going to be battling myself. So it seems fair to exit now and save myself some pain.

I still feel mildly out of my mind. But I don’t think the caffeine is to blame. I think I am happy. But I don’t know. I feel like I churn out words that have no meaning. In an effort to feel more sane I am going to try and streamline my thoughts.

I don’t believe in God. I have not believed in many years. But today after a long time I have considered praying. Not for a higher power, not for God, but for myself. Maybe it will help me feel calmer. I want to feel calmer. I have this vague idea in my head but I can’t put it into words. I am doing things. I am trying to make things better for myself and for my family. Sometimes when I am doing something I feel good and then suddenly in the middle of it I feel like I can’t stand it one second more. That hasn’t happened to me in many years. All this time I have felt very consistently low. But I don’t know what’s happening to me now. I am not making a lot of sense. So much for streamlining my thoughts.

The meaninglessness of everything is crushing. I feel like I’m the only person in the world that knows the secret. And everybody else is just walking around blind. Living their lives. Taking their kids to school everyday. When in reality there is a crushing meaninglessness on their shoulders. They don’t realise. They don’t feel the weight. I am the only one that feels the weight and I am completely alone. Everything is difficult for me because I am the only one that feels it. Everybody else is blind. That’s what it feels like a lot of the time for me. I want to feel better than this. I want to be blind like everyone else. But I don’t know how I am supposed to achieve that. I don’t know how I am supposed to do that without being like them. Believing in God. Having a meaningless job. Being poor. Always thinking about money. Having children and a family. But I don’t know if I want those things. I don’t know if I ever want to buy a house in the city. I don’t know if I ever want to grow old. Or drop my kids to school and pick them up. It is scary. I am just very confused right now. I haven’t seen a lot of stuff I don’t have a lot of experience with much of anything. I just want to feel normal like everyone else. And I want to be able to do all these things that they do. But I don’t know how to do that being myself. And it makes me crazy to think that I am defined by my depression. This has become who I am. Because I have spent so many years in this hole. I have no idea what I’m supposed to do now, where I am supposed to go from here. I have no idea what my life is going to be like in 6 months. I have no idea whether I will live or die. I have no idea whether I will do anything I ever wanted to. And the most scary thing in all of this is that before I knew how I was going to die. I was always very sure that at the end of everything, when I had done everything that I ever wanted to, I would get a gun and shoot myself. But now I am confused. I don’t know if I am going to die by my own hand. What if I die tomorrow in a car accident? How can I live like that? How can I live knowing that I don’t plan to die?

My mind is racing. I am thinking about achieving too many things. I don’t know why I feel like this. And frankly it is a little scary. I am changing as a person. I don’t know who I am becoming. And I don’t know if who I was before was a better or worse than this. To be honest I feel a little crazy. Maybe I have the wrong diagnosis. Maybe I should not be drinking coffee. Maybe I should go back to eating my medicine in the morning. I know it is good to feel this way. I am doing so much. I have not been like this in so many years. I want to feel like this. I don’t know if normal people feel like this. But I feel so strange. I feel like I am out of my skin. I don’t feel like myself. I am a stranger and I am looking at myself and things are going too fast. Sometimes I feel numb. When I adjust my medication I feel number and I lose my sexual abilities and the things become very difficult for a short time. It is strange. All of this is strange. I have never tried to fix this before. I didn’t even think I had a problem. I thought that was the normal. I thought the way I felt was the way everybody felt. I thought everybody was suicidal. I thought we were all just lying to ourselves and to each other. I couldn’t do anything at all. I couldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t comb my hair. I couldn’t cut my nails. I couldn’t brush my teeth. I have three new cavities because I couldn’t brush my teeth. I couldn’t do anything. I failed at being a basic human being. And I don’t know how to be anything different for that is my normal. That was my normal. I feel so out of place feeling this way. This is not me. Even though I want to feel like this I don’t know how. I just don’t know how to be this woman right now. I am scared. that is the truth. I am scared of what is to come. I am scared of the past. I am scared of becoming old versions of myself again. I don’t know what else to say. I have been worried. I worry too much. But I don’t know what I am worrying about. This post is just to explain to myself and help myself sort through all these thoughts in my head but still at the end of this I don’t know what I feel right now. I don’t know what I will feel tomorrow. I don’t know what I felt yesterday. I don’t know how I am going to live like this anymore. I can’t focus on one thing at a time. I am constantly distracted. I have to do new things. I enjoy doing some things. But still there is the old feeling lurking, of being glued to my place for hours and days and years and not being able to get out of bed and not being able to open my eyes and not being able to sleep and not being able to achieve the most simple tasks. But will I be like that again? Will that feeling come back? Am I going to be depressed forever? Am I bipolar? Is it normal for depressed people on SSRIs to feel this way? I have been taking the medicine for two months now and this is the first time I have been this able. Earlier I was just free of fatigue but now I am physically unable to stop achieving things. I just can’t sit still. I feel like everything is going too fast.

I’m working on getting better. I’m going out often. I comb my hair every day. I cook and clean. I brush and floss. The next step is regular exercise, cutting screen time, managing work deadlines, and working on relationships. I’m tempted to stop taking antidepressants because I feel better, but everything I’ve read about this treatment warns against doing so, so I shan’t. I think I still have months to go. After the realization that the feelings I’ve had my entire life truly are irrational, I’ve been working on rationalizing my thought process. I refuse to let myself remain this way. It is a brand new feeling. Every time I feel the old way, I remind myself that I’m wrong, and go ahead calmly. I’ve never felt this confident before. I’m wrong. Everything is okay. I’m so wrong.

I’m sleeping better, my appetite is regular. I’m more aware of myself because I’m actively working to improve my situation, and I have found several cyclic patterns in my behavior that I’m going to change. I know what’s next, and all the steps I’m going to take in the next three months are loosely connected in my mind. The peak of good feelings with this medication has waned. I feel incapable of movement these days. I want to remain where I am and it’s difficult to change old habits. But new habits come easy now. The meds have made me more consistent in my emotional states, and with more energy in general so I can accomplish a small task every day until it’s routine.

I’ve made two big mistakes in the past week. They’re really fucking me up. But I don’t want to keep beating myself up and spiralling lower back. There’s nothing I can do to change them. I can only mitigate their effects in the future. And that’s what I’m trying to focus on. I’ve faced this before and time healed it.

I’ve been trying to take things easy recently and it’s helped. I’m a big overthinker. A very serious person and a worrier. But it’s really not helpful to be that uptight. I’m trying to let events take their course now. I’m giving myself breathing space. I’m being spontaneous, and doing things I’d never do. Letting things go, forgiving people. Losing myself in my surroundings.

I’ve dipped a little since my initial experience with medication, but I feel more permanent now. It wasn’t temporary, it wasn’t placebo. I am going to be capable of bringing myself back to this place at any point in my life that I might return to this pit. That’s comforting. This is my safety net. I’m more able now than I can ever remember being. It’s my new baseline. No matter how low I sink I can always bring me back to this. And it’s a manageable place to be. I’m glad I did this. I’m glad I live in the 21st century.