Strength.

Living with a mental illness is all consuming. It drains every drop of energy you have and leaves you feeling hollow, numb and utterly miserable. So often, the hardest thing to do is to carry on living and attempting to function as normal. Sometimes, it seems impossible to do. But I genuinely believe that within all of us lies an almost superhuman strength. It is this strength that drags you out of bed in the mornings and that makes you smile even though you're dying inside. The strength comes from a place no unchallenged human mind can unlock, but in the face of adversity, we discover that we are far stronger than we ever believed possible. It is this strength that has kept you alive thus far, and this strength will continue to pulse through you when life is unbearable. It does not make you feel better or make things easier but rather gives you the ability to work through the hardship with the hope of a life that, one day, may be worth living. The really wonderful thing is that this strength is by no means separate from you as a person. You are the one who is immensely strong and powerful. You are the one who finds the ability to carry on living when you would rather be dead. You are outstanding, beautiful and you have the power to conquer the unbearable pain that for so long has crippled you. And you must remember that you are not alone. Your strength will naturally draw other people to you, and together, you can climb your Everest. 

Hypocrite.

Having re-read many of my previous posts, I have come to recognise a trend in my writing. I describe an area of depression that affects myself and others and I endeavour to shed some light on the impact that this illness has on one's life. I then weave duplicitous strands of optimism and morality into my writing in an attempt to cast a positive light on a situation which appears, for me, in reality, to be entirely without hope. 

The truth of the matter is that I am a hypocrite. I tell people to ‘just keep going’ and I remind them that there will be a time when they will feel happy to be alive; I urge them to think of those who love and care for them and to recognise that their survival is a success and yet I spend every day wishing that I had never existed, willing myself to die, feeling completely isolated and as though I will never see light again. It seems laughable that a single person should take heed of my words when I myself am unable to believe what I write. When I put pen to paper, (or in this case finger to keyboard) it is as though my depression pulls back a curtain enough to tantalise me with a sparkle of hope and logic, before filling my entire body and soul with a blackness that blocks, obscures and warps any light that may have once had a chance of finding its way through my sceptical skull. 

And if I cannot follow my own advice, if I cannot believe my own sentiments, then how am I ever to instil enough confidence in another person that my words should help their suffering to be lessened even a little? The words I write are not worth reading for they are the words of a liar. I cannot that everything will be OK in the end. I cannot be sure that one day, you will dance with joy simply because you are alive. The best way I can think of providing something on which one can found their hope of a life better than this is by using the words of one much wiser and more intelligent than I, George Eliot:
“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”

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.