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.”

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.