Dearest Beth.

A letter to my dear friend Beth, and to all those in need of encouragement in desperate times.

Dearest Beth,
As I write this, I keep in mind that my words will not take your pain away. I cannot do that, although I dearly wish I could. But I hope that I can at least bring you a little comfort in these dark and painful days. Life can be so cruel and it often seems so much easier to just give up and die. You feel that death is the only way out and that nothing can help you, but this is a lie, formulated by a cruel part of your mind. Although now, it seems like you keep falling uncontrollably into the black hole of misery and that you just can't stop, there will come a time when a little sunlight will start to shine on you, you will start to claw your way out of the hole and days will begin to seem slightly brighter and less cumbersome. It is impossible to imagine it on a dark day but it's true. I may say all of this and know that it is true, but I do also know the reality that it feels like your suffering will never come to an end and that there is no hope of a life beyond this horrific pain. But that is a feeling, and feelings are not facts, they cannot be trusted. This doesn't take away from the fact that you have those feelings. They are awful, unbearable and completely agonising. They are your reality, but it helps me to remember that they are only feelings, terrible ones at that but still feelings nonetheless. Of course, there will be days you will fall again but knowing that things are bound to get better is a thought that sustains me, even in my darkest hours.
I love you so much and I wish that you had never had to endure this pain. I wish I could wrap you in my blanket and cuddle you and protect you from all sadness and pain. It seems so unfair that such a brilliant, loving person should suffer as you do. Having said that, pain makes you stronger and wiser. Without it, we would never know what good is, for we must have something to compare the goodness to. And the good times seem all the sweeter having tasted the bitterness of unfathomable misery. You may feel as though you deserve the pain, but you do not. I know that self hatred often comes with the package of depression, and it is hard to feel that you deserve joy and happiness, but you do. You care so deeply for others and never fail to make me smile. You make me want to carry on, just so that I can have a lifetime of happy memories with you. A person with the ability to love and care as deeply as you is left naturally vulnerable to the unbearable pain that you are feeling, which is ironic, as you, of all people, do not deserve to feel this way. It can make you feel so alone, separate from all the people that you love, and this makes surviving even harder. But this is what depression wants. It wants all happiness to desert you. It wants to destroy relationships, isolate you, make you become so introspective that you cannot see the beauty and hope that the world exudes. If you let it, it will take everything that makes life worth living from you. But you can fight it. By staying connected to people, not hiding yourself away and continuing to talk about how you feel, you can battle against the dark cloud looming in your head and keep your sanity and the ones you love. You are able to not lose yourself in the misery, as impossible as it seems, because you are not alone; you have me and so many other people who love you so much. It would shatter my entire world to lose you. I don't say this to try and blackmail you into not killing yourself. I say this because I love you, need you and can see a future for you. A happy future, full of love and laughter, friendships and happiness. As clichéd as it sounds, you will get through this, and you will live the life you deserve. There is so much to look forward to in the rest of your life, even though I know you struggle to see it. Simple things like hugs, and walks on the common. There are so many jokes you have yet to hear, stories you have yet to tell, places you have yet to visit and people you have yet to meet.
I know that none of this makes the pain you are feeling go away, or hurt any less. But your future is full of hope, and hope is the one thing depression cannot take, because other people can hold it for you. I have so much hope for you, even if you cannot hold hope for yourself. But I am here for you, no matter what. I will never give up on you, never stop loving you and never, ever stop hoping that one day, you will be able to say you are truly happy. And until then, I will hold you and comfort you, wipe your tears and share your burdens. I am not perfect. I will fuck up. I've let you down so much before and will probably let you down again, but just know that I am sorry, and that I love you and will never stop caring. I don't have the all the answers but I will sit with you in your darkest moments, comfort you when you feel so desperately alone and frightened, fight against the darkness with you and never let you go.
It is not easy for me to write any of this, because I find it so hard to believe it for myself, but I know that what I am writing is true. I know it must be hard to read and believe this, when even getting through the next hour seems impossible. Just know that I do know what it is to feel void of all happiness and hope. I know what it is like to want to die more than anything and to wish that you had never been born. I understand how utterly desperate you feel, how tortuously alone you feel and how you feel that nothing will ever be good again. I know what it is to feel that every smile is fake, every laugh is forced and every word is full of deceit. I know that life seems pointless, living seems futile and each breath feels as though you are being mocked for still being alive. I understand, I feel that too. I can't take those horrible things away from you. But I can say that I am still alive and so are you, and that proves that we are stronger than every single one of the disgusting, disturbing thoughts in our heads. Those thoughts are not you, they are the depression. You are not depression. We will survive this, beat it and move on from it. It seems like absolute agony now, but it will get better, whether that is in a day, a month, or a year. And then we will be glad we carried on and fought through it, instead of giving up.
I love you, and I'm here for you, no matter what. You will survive this. I believe in you.
With all my love,
Alice.

Weakness.

Having recently written a post on the strength and resilience of humanity, it has struck me that while we all possess immense strength, we are also all incredibly vulnerable. On some days, our ability to survive and to thrive shines out like a beacon of hope in the dark. Yet on others, the black cloud that traps our minds is all consuming, and this cloud leaves us so emotionally drained and sensitive that anything can trigger a breakdown of epic proportions. As one of my therapists once said to me 'It's like having the top layer of your skin removed'. Everything is felt that little bit more acutely, rawly; you have scraped the bottom of your resources jar and you barely have the energy to hold your head up. And it is at this time, our weakest, that calling out to others is vital. So often people withdraw from the world when they can't escape from their own skull, but this only perpetuates the pain. It can often be the hardest thing to do- it can feel humiliating, exhausting, not worth the effort but asking for help will, more often than not, bring you some comfort. It will drag you a little way out of the hole that is being dug around you and it will shine a little light into the gloomy corners of your mind. And no, others won't be able to take the pain away. They won't be able to make everything OK and they may not even be able to comprehend the pain you are in, but in desperate times, even a hug, a cup of tea and a shoulder to cry on can help to begin to heal the raw agony of emotional pain. We cry out for help at our weakest, and humanity will answer this cry, this plea. And that is, in my mind, possibly is humanities greatest strength of all. 

So I'm back...

Although I'm pretty sure that nobody will have missed my writing, I'm back. I've been away for a while, staying on a psychiatric ward for acutely mentally ill adolescents. It's a little odd- despite being someone who has always been able to express their experiences well, I find it almost impossible to talk or write in detail about the ward. I was there for nearly three months and although I met some of my best friends there, and it stopped me from killing myself, it was really horrible. These last few months have been utterly unbearable. Again, oddly, I'm lost for words. My blog is generally written with intent to provoke thought in the reader, or to encourage others, but I don't seem to be able to think of anything to say. All I can say is: I'm still alive, despite everything, despite all of my attempts to end my life. And if you're reading this then you, too, are alive. And that is something. Currently, you are winning the frantic battle that rages on in your body and mind. Even if your life is as you want it to be, it is still an achievement that you are alive. So well done. Keep going.

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.