Wonderland.

“We're all mad here. Im mad. You're mad” 

Intriguingly, and somewhat ironically, I have been finding that aspects of my life can be likened to those of the events in the children's fantasy tale of Alice in Wonderland. Alice, having followed an odd looking rabbit concerned about being late, finds herself falling very rapidly down a strange and scary hole,

“Down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.” 

before emerging in a room of strange delicacies that completely alter her body and being faced with a set of doors that she cannot fit through.

While Alice's experiences are a little reminiscent of an acid trip gone wrong, her situation vividly reminds me of my own. I feel as though I'm falling, and each time I think I have hit rock bottom, the ground beneath me crumbles and I continue to fall, and I, like Alice, have no idea how in the world I will get out again. I stare at the person who is supposed to be me in the mirror but my body warps before my very eyes, each day I feel larger and less sure of what I am than before and I loathe what meets my eyes.

“How puzzling all these changes are! I'm never sure what I'm going to be, from one minute to another.” 

I find myself presented with options for my future, similar to the doors which Alice struggles to get through in the story, but I can never fit through the doorway that could lead to the potential wonderland. So I am stuck in perpetual free fall, utterly lost and bewildered, unable to make a decision about anything and unconsciously doing everything in my power to destroy everything in my life that is good.

“Alice came to a fork in the road. 'Which road do I take?' she asked.

'Where do you want to go?' responded the Cheshire Cat. 

'I don't know,' Alice answered. 

'Then,' said the Cat, 'it doesn't matter.” 

Alice had a wonderland to look forward to, after a terrifying yet exhilarating adventure. This is where the difference in the our situations lies; all I see before me is darkness, pain and death. I cannot see that things will ever get better, or that I have a hope of a life better than this painful existence. And there's nothing wonderful about that.

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.

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.

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.