Everyone gets sick.

This weekend has been a bit of a challenge and I have found video making a positive distraction. Have a watch and share to help make a difference to others who are suffering. 

Mental euthanasia.

Always a controversial topic, euthanasia is the wood that fuels many fiery debates. Should a person be able to choose when they die? Is life sacred? Is the value of a life dependant on the quality of a life? If a person is suffering unbearably, do they have the right to decide whether they continue living? Although euthanasia is not legal in the UK and many other countries, many would agree that if someone has a debilitating physical disability that renders them incapable of having a decent quality of life, then they have a right to choose to end their suffering on their terms, at peace with themselves and their decision having had the opportunity to say goodbye to the ones they love. If one is physically incapable of leading a life worth living, then what is the point in living, other than to keep the ones who love you from pain or sadness? But it should not be this way. People should live because they want to and because they are able to experience a full life, not because they do not wish to hurt others. And if they do not want to, why should they? Doctors can decide not to resuscitate a seriously ill patient. Why should they essentially be allowed to decide whether a patient lives or dies, and yet they themselves cannot choose to die with dignity when they choose to.  Suicide can tear families apart, it can break the hearts of the people left behind and it can leave a person to die desperately alone. But in many cases, suicide seems like the only way out for people trapped inside their disabled bodies. Here, however, is my question: What about those trapped by their own minds? Should they not also have the right to choose whether they end their suffering in peace and dignity as opposed to ending up as a stain on the floor in the shadow of a 16 storey building? One cannot tell if the mental pain that is so heavy and unendurable it physically affects everything you think, feel or do is transient or not. Just as families and friends are able, with time, to come to terms with the death of a loved one with a physical disability or illness, families need to come to terms with the fact that people with depression, bipolar, anxiety, schizophrenia, dual-personality disorder and other mental illnesses may also have the wish to die with dignity on their terms, to end their suffering. Mental illness can be unbearable, just as physical disability can. It can rob happiness, enjoyment, peace, love, laughter, fun, hope, dreams and all else that is good from a life, until it is too painful, too full of suffering to endure any more. Euthanasia is intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering. Mental illness causes pain and suffering too.

Let down.

Everyone has been let down. We let the people we love down. They let us down. Institutions let us down: Schools let us down. The government lets us down. The people we trust most let us down. Some people have been let down their entire life. There isn't much we can do about it, as failure is in our nature; regardless of how hard one tries not to fail themselves or others.

Humans do, however, have an innate ability that has the power to override the pain of being failed: we are able to love. Love, as clichéd as it sounds, has the ability to heal some really deep wounds. And if we can't help but fail the ones we love, then at least we have the resources within ourselves to fill the hole that failure leaves. I have seen people who have been failed time and time again and although I cannot remove the burden of the damage that has been done, I can ensure that the person knows they are loved, cared for, valued and cherished. It may not make everything better again, but it might help them keep their heads above water, which is really important. 

Warp.

One thing I have come to understand in the past months is that depression drastically warps our outlook on life. 

It is as though you are looking at life through a kaleidoscope, the only difference being that while a kaleidoscope turns light into beautiful mosaic like patterns, depression makes light look dark, colours look grey and the most beautiful of things look, at best, ordinary. Depression warps one's perception of the world around us: Filtering out the good, positive, life affirming things so that what we are left with is a hopeless cavity into which all things are drawn and warped to appear negative, hence compounding our view that there is really no reason for us to live at all. Whatever we have previously enjoyed, believed in or relished is sucked from our world; we lose, in essence, the ability to derive pleasure from anything or to hold on to any hope that life will be good again.  

And regardless of how well my head knows the fact that it is the depression taking away my will to live, it doesn't change the fact that I CAN'T see the point to life. I can't tell the depression to leave my head, simply because I have recognised the cause of my despair. The fact of the matter is, depressed people still FEEL the despair, the loneliness, the hopelessness, the futility, the sadness, the frustration, the impulse to hurt and even kill themselves, the emptiness and so much more. Regardless of what causes these emotions, they are very much present and dominant in the lives of so many people. Depression warps everything good in the lives of its sufferers into something unbearable. And that's hard to live through.

Depression: Get lost.

My second video. Again, it is about challenging things involving mental illness. This time, however, it shows the effect of mental illness on the sufferer and their loved ones.

Please share with others to help spread awareness.

Do what makes you happy.

Today, my mum gave me a book entitled:

'You can feel good again- The good news about depression.'

I got cross. Whether that reaction was justified, I do not know. The problem is, for me, and everyone else with a deeply rooted depressive disorder, there is no good news. Or at least it feels that way. And to be told that your illness is due to you thinking about your problems and being almost 'self-indulgent' in your sadness, loneliness, emptiness, anxiety and so on feels almost as though you are being told that this is all 'your fault'. But then, when I showed them this book, someone that knows me well said to me that yes, this person is wrong in saying that you can dig yourself out of such a deep hole, but they have a valid point. You have to do what makes YOU happy. You have to pepper the darkness and monotony of depression with spurts of laughter, enjoyment and impulsiveness, with love, friendship and fun. Depression sucks all of those things out of life until there you have no reason left to live. And so somehow, we have to put it back in. I don't want to, but I have to. For the people who love me. 

That's why doing what makes you happy makes so much sense. I know that if you're depressed, you won't be happy, but you may be able to find some relief, even for a moment. And then, let's just hope those better moments can just become more frequent. 

What about God?

Can we ever know the truth about God? Before I got depressed, I thought I was a Christian. I thought that God was good. I thought he loved us and cared for us. I grew up in a Christian home with Christian parents and Christian friends, and although I have always been inquisitive, I had never experienced something to make me challenge my perceptions of God. Until last year. Until I stopped living a life and started spending hours on end wishing for death to win. Naturally, all of my morbid speculations caused me to question what lies 'beyond the grave'. Do I just die and stop being? Do I get damned to an eternal hell to burn for all eternity to pay penance for my pitiful, sinful, selfish existence? 

What's more, being at the very bottom of a cavernously deep and infinitely black void makes one wonder why a God who claims to have 

'loved the world so much that he gave his one and only son' (John 3:16)

 would ever subject the beings he claims to have created to the kinds of unbearable suffering that are present in this cruel world: Starvation. Loss. Despair. Rape. Murder. War. Cancer. Loneliness. Depression. It isn't even as though God tries to hide the fact that he lets his people suffer. Take a look at the book of Job (pronounced: jobe) in the Old Testament; Although Job did everything he could to be right with God, God took everything away from him until Job begged for death, simply to prove a point (and display his power) to the devil. Is it not actually a little sadistic that God would create this world and the people who walk the Earth and then allow them to suffer just so he can prove that he has power over them? And then the bible tells people to call to God in times of trouble-

'Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find rest for your souls.' (Matthew 11:28-30)

 when actually, he is only giving us rest from something which he has essentially inflicted upon us. And then we are expected to praise and worship and adore him. But at the moment, I just can't, because waking up every single day wishing you had never been born and dragging yourself through the day suppressing the intense emotions that leave you utterly isolated and completely desperate is not really something I feel like giving thanks for.

Family.

Family: utterly infuriating yet completely loveable. It's really quite hard to find just the right words to describe a family. Possibly because every family is different; they come from a variety of cultures and are formed from so many dynamics that to try and define 'a family' is like trying to fit an apple into a matchbox. It cannot be done (unless you break the matchbox and squish the apple). 

Of course, a traditional family is a father, mother and two perfect children who all sit absolutely within their straight laced stereotypes.

 But it would be a struggle to find even one family like that. You don't need to be related by blood or alike in personality or temperament. You don't need to live in the same house or even the same country. You don't need to want to spend time with them and you don't need to get on and agree on everything. Your family are the people who have an affect on you.

 Not everyone has a mother and a father. Some people have two dads, some people have no parents, some people have twelve siblings and some have none. Some people are adopted and some people are in care. Some people are married, some are single, and some have partners. Some people have no blood relations but that doesn't mean they don't have a family. Family are the ones who drag you out of bed when you can't do it yourself. They pick you up off of the ground, dust you off and wipe away your tears. Families keep things from each other and they protect each other. But however a family is built, they love each other above all else, even if it's hidden beneath petty disagreements or problems that flow far deeper. 

Our family has very little to do with our genetics, but rather our ability to build and maintain thoughtful, meaningful and helpful, but by no means perfect, relationships. No one is without family. Nobody stands alone in this world.

Be aware.

Today is self injury awareness day. Today will be important for so many people affected by the issue. Show them you care and that you're there to support them, don't try to force them to stop, it could be keeping them alive. 

Self injury awareness day 2013