TheOpenRoad

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.

The past few days have been hard. This whole decision was tough. Old feelings are flooding back, and I’m rethinking everything I’ve done these past years. I really don’t like feeling like this. I’m desperate to stop, and considering moving again for a change of scene. I don’t want to go home anymore, and this place is sickeningly familiar to home. I’m thinking this time I’ll go far east. Find people I once knew. Restart again. But how long till I feel this old despair yet again? I’m tired of this situation I keep creating for myself.

On the plus side, I’m full of energy. I can get a lot done today. I want to fix this. I don’t want this halfway life anymore.

I made a dumb mistake and now I may have to stop taking antidepressants. Anyway, at least I’m completely honest with everyone in my life now.

I’m determined not to get back to feeling like crap. I deeply don’t want to go back to insomnia and fatigue and ocd and anorexia and existential dread. God, I’m so stupid. Why did I do that? Honesty is not the best policy.

So I’m kind of done. I’m feeling horribly anxious right now. I wish I could turn back time. I regret this so much. Fuck me.

I was thinking I’d take a loan and go to college. I need to change.

Happy mother’s day mom. Maybe I’ll call you today.

I’ve had a bad day. It’s really hard to feel like this after I saw the light these past few weeks. Maybe Robert was right and meds stop working over time. Or maybe it’s worrying about marriage. I’ll tell him tomorrow I don’t want to get married yet. I just can’t keep thinking about it.

I’ll try upping my dose for a while. It’s going to be shitty when I tell him. I’m tired. I need a break from this.

I’m sort of afraid now. Is this all I get? Some time off and then back to this feeling? When the meds started working, I felt like a new person. Like everything normal everyone does suddenly made sense because that’s how they feel every day. It seemed to me that any kind of futute is not so bad, and how it’s possible to be happy doing the same things every day. I had no idea you could feel like that. I cursed myself for not doing this sooner. I’ve lost the last seven years of my life to a curable disease. But today I’m back to feeling hopeless. And I don’t know if I’ll feel better tomorrow, and if I do, if I’ll get better the next time. I wanted to die if I’d feel like this for the rest of my life. And I’m all the more sure of that now that I’ve seen the world differently. I never want to be stuck in this hole again.

Just need to be honest. I told my partner some tough truths. Honestly, it was more for me than him or our relationship. Keeping those secrets was killing me. But double honestly (lol) I think I was hoping for something to change. Kind of hoped it would help things between us. But anyway, things haven’t changed much. We’re still in the same rut as before.

Earlier I thought he was the best person I’d ever known. But in retrospect it seems to me that all those unselfish things he committed to were actually exactly what he wanted. I saw him do it to someone else. In that moment he looked like a stranger to me. It’s eating away at me. Am I marrying the person I thought I loved or a master of manipulation? And still he won’t talk to me. I didn’t believe he had it in him to be this way. I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do to try and fix this. I’m filled with doubts.

I didn’t expect to love him forever, but I did want to keep choosing him, and he’s making that pretty hard. Over the past year, I’ve been hurt until I didn’t want to hear from him anymore. I just don’t want to speak to him. And yet I’ve hardened my heart and melted it again over and over because I want it to work. And now we’re getting married. After the year we’ve just had, maybe I’m not ready. I’m just really tired of dancing to his tune. I either want peace or I don’t want to interact with him. Do I tell him I want to wait on marriage? That’ll hurt him. I don’t want to.

I’m really hurt that he didn’t bother to do anything about the shit I asked him about. It’s like he doesn’t care. This is hard. I wish I hadn’t met him. Maybe I should just give up. Take a break. Let myself fall out of love with him. Right now I really want to.

This is all really bothering me. It keeps me up at night. I wish I could just be truthful with everyone about everything. It would make my days so simple.

Anyway, I’m just going to keep keeping my mind off it all. Excuse the long post, I didn’t plan on this becoming a venting session but that’s what it ended up as.

I’m tired of myself. I want a break from being me. A long sleep. There’s a place in my mind I go when I need comfort, and I want that place to be real. I wish I was a different person. Born somewhere else. In a different time. My eyes are tired. I need somewhere to slow down. Life just moves too fast. I’m sick of isolation. I want to go outside again and run to catch the bus. I haven’t been sleeping enough. I tried to give something to someone yesterday and it didn’t work. I wish I had a different first language. Reading is dangerous. I don’t want reality, I want all the places I escaped to in books and movies and dreams. My stomach is empty and I won’t fill it. I plan too much. I wish she’d stop talking. I’m a prisoner of ritual. I want to sleep forever. I’m going to lose everything. If only I was less tired. I want energy. I honestly want to change. How do I change? I’m a secret. I hate lying and that’s all I do. Because everything that comes out of my mouth is a lie I am completely alone. I just need the strength to change something. But all change falls through eventually. Every time I achieve a change I just go back to what it was like earlier in a few weeks. How do I stop? God, I hate every day. I hate myself. Why can’t I tell him everything? Why am I still lying? It’s crushing me. There’s no such thing as a white lie. At least I’m not angry anymore. Why can’t I take a break? I want to be a kid again and have a summer vacation. And now she’s calling me. It’s just annoying. I’m not paying her for leaving me stranded halfway to the city with nothing but a bag of toiletries. I’ll really call the cops if she doesn’t quit asking.

It sort of seems to me that we live to die. The idea of growing old is scary. Everybody that’s old now was once my age. I don’t know.

A few weeks ago I was doing really badly. I was convinced I was losing my partner. Not that I’m fully convinced otherwise now. I felt dead. I couldn’t get myself to do anything. My toilet is still dirty. I wanted weed, and I couldn’t get it. I was desperate for something to change. I couldn’t sleep. I was losing myself. Smoking too much. It’s really tough to quit. I never should have started.

I don’t know how it’s possible for me to live my whole life. I want many things. But I’m afraid of time. I don’t want to be murdered. I don’t want to be poor. Fuck poverty. I especially don’t want to be raped. I was so afraid of being raped I found a way out. After I saw that dead raped girl I was decided. It’s not rape if I consent. So the first time I was in a dangerous situation, I consented. And I lived. And things went a little crazy from there.

I hate living in a big city. I grew up in a massive city. It may be my home, but I am no one there. I hate traffic and travel and people crammed into small spaces. Why is housing so expensive? I hate sitting in buses and getting a face full of smoke every few minutes. All the trees are dusty. There is never any money and there is never any space. I want to be a farmer, and wake up every day and work in the sun. I really hate dust in the air. It has no business being there.

I have no idea whether I’ll live or die. My grandfather killed himself. His wife just died. A shopkeeper I knew is dead of covid. I met a man once that studied at law school and ended up selling nuts and bolts in a roadside shop. He chose to do it because the shop paid three times what a lawyer’s salary would. He was crazy for going to college. He’s dead now of covid. I don’t know. It shouldn’t all affect me, but it makes me really sad.

I wish horribly I could talk to my partner. I’m really tired, and I have no will to do anything. I want money. I want many children. And to live where I always wanted. I wish I had a tv so I could sit on my ass and do nothing every day I come home. I wish to God I could sleep so I wasn’t so bored. I’m going to shave my head because I’m so tired of it. I want to cry. I’m depressing myself.

Weird post, but I wanted to share a few things I’ve come to realize.

People keep saying passive shit like “things will get better” or “I hope you’re doing okay”, but their whole approach is wrong. Passiveness is just contrary to anything that could help. So I’m pretty sure most of us here are depressed. I’ve heard that diagnosis before. And earlier I thought it was just a way of life, because I hadn’t felt different in so many years. But I think now it’s an illness. A real, curable illness. A depressed brain is physically different from a healthy one. So things won’t get better. Depression won’t just fix itself. You won’t magically wake up happy. You’ve got to treat it as if it were any other disease. The nature of this is such that it tries its hardest to stop you doing that curing. We’re fatigued. Nobody wants to exercise. It’s easier to cut.

But you know, the people we are is just chemicals. Love, friendship, sex drive, appetite. When you’re high, you behave differently, don’t you? That’s just a chemical. So why not chemicals for a disease of the mind? And I’m not talking about recreational shit.

Antidepressants. I’m on SSRIs a month now, and I feel different. I have more energy. I’m able to stick to a deadline. I can hold a conversation without tiring. I get out of bed every morning, albeit a little sleep deprived. My emotions are blunted, and it feels good to be this stable. I laugh at stupid jokes my partner cracks that earlier just tired the fuck out of me.

Why did I never try this solution? What’s the downside? It’s practically free, the meds are so cheap. And fortunately for me, I don’t need a scrip for the stuff in my country. So I don’t have to pay for therapy. But for those of you that are less fortunate, I don’t know, write a fake prescription. It’s worth it. You know you’re depressed, you don’t need overpaid bourgeois scum to tell you that and leech off you for months. This could be the end of my feeling this way. I can hardly imagine what a whole normal life would feel like. I never knew I could come back to this. I thought this feeling died with childhood.

I’m falling back into the same hole with the ceiling reinforced above me. I’m afraid of what happens next. I need sleep but it won’t come. I need not to think about any of this but it won’t stop. There are no misery solving pills. Only kids can be happy. Fuck happiness, can’t I just have an ounce of self control? Normalcy maybe? I’d given it up. I was doing alright. And after all that fucking effort, all those sleepless fucking nights, it takes one stupid day to take it all apart? Who the fuck made the rules? What the fuck am I supposed tp do now? Do it all again? God. I hate myself so much. I can’t defeat myself so I can win. That doesn’t even make sense. How the fuck did I get here.

I can’t believe what I’ve become. There is nothing left of who I was. I can’t stand people, because they are so full of plans for the future. I can’t imagine having a future, and the sixty odd years I could live yet scare me more than anything in the world. I exist on the whims of my organs. The thought that they are all that stand between me and oblivion never leaves my mind. There are emotions I refuse to manifest and others that make themselves heard. Thoughts wash over me as opposed to being thought. Everything occurs outside of myself. I am not the one feeling emptiness. I am not the one trying to sleep. When I dream, I am often in a haven where there is no language and nobody can ask anything of me. I feel black, like I’m rotting from the inside.

I want to end completely, cease to exist and truly be nothing.

This site is as old as me!