Depression and what it's really like

Elvis, no apologies are necessary on this thread! That sounds like a damn intense day.

Spectrum, glad to hear you wanting to take care of yourself. It's possible when you're stronger you'll be in a better position to negotiate and communicate with them. Then again some people are not interested in communicating. Sounds like there is a lot of detachment going on. Maybe your family has no idea how shitty they make you feel? As I've said, I'm often surprised I can hurt people because I'm so self-focused and feel like I don't really affect anyone. Maybe they need to know, at least your brothers. But for now try to focus on things and people who make you feel good.

Yeah, I hear that ... those thoughts ran through my own head a few times. But it's like...

Whenever I try to talk to anyone in my family about this stuff, they never accept responsibility and they shift the blame to me. I confronted my mom about ditching my graduation, and she said I was overreacting, and I actually believed her, and then I apologized for it! Then my relationship with her seemed OK for a while, then she drags me into some fight she was having with my grandfather, and she tells me he never loved me, he cared about his other grand kids more, shit like that, and it was a real headfuck. All the while within my relationship with her, it's perfectly OK for her to ditch me on her whim because she never apologized or showed any remorse whatsoever about it. If I do actually stand my ground I get called "the most selfish person in the world" by my other family members. It's always been like this. and I've been stuck in it my whole life.

Same goes with my two older brothers ... sometimes things are pretty OK for a while, then they act real friggin shitty towards me, and I say it annoys me, then they laugh it off or place the blame on me. My one brother even said flat out, "I don't respect you," after I confronted him about insulting me to other people in front of my face, smacking me upside the head, demeaning me, etc. He makes me feel like I ran over his dog and then pissed on its corpse, then sold heroin to his kid, etc., when I tell him I don't like him being a jackass to me.

Everyone in my family, immediate and extended, are absolutely friggin miserable, and I don't want to end up like them. I love them to death, but I keep getting dragged in ... and my role as garbage dump/nonentity never changes because they never admit they're wrong -- I'm always wrong. and if I do something wrong, I apologize profusely and crawl to them on my hands and knees with a gold plate filled with fruits and spices from the far east, etc. Maybe they take advantage of me because I'm sensitive and have a high need for love, who knows.

If it means going my own way, fine ... it's not like they were ever really a part of my life anyway, except in my imagination. They're all fucked, and if they can't see it or don't have the guts to break out on their own, it makes me sad, but it's not my life. I've tried too hard to help them with love and shit, but the abusive family system is way bigger than I am.

damn that's long.

yeah, I need to not think about this shit for a while

your mom sounds like Patty Hewes from Damages, minus the killing.

my family is too nice to be a drama, too boring to be a sitcom. I come from a family of nameless extras. I think I'm finally okay with that, and the fact that I will not fall too far from that tree.

I'm sorry you're going through all that Elvis :(

Guh! Fuck that noise xpost

i want to finish the program before i say anything about it. i'm done in a week or so, i'll let you know.

ugh. i couldn't decide whether to revive this thread or the suicide thread. it's bad, lord.

on the other hand, i was just listening to the stooges on spotify and it got interrupted for a commercial for the kidz bop christmas album and i had an honest to god lol. so perhaps all is not lost.

i'm sorry it's so rough for u, strongo

i know that doesn't help but... :(

hang in there

trying, dudes. i regret even posting that. but nevertheless.

Another day, another ill-advised thing posted to the internet by someone, somewhere. Not to worry. You're in the right place, we got ya.

you know, a lot of days, i think there's only three things standing between me and suicidal ideation

1) my dog

2) my turtle

3) my cocktail of six brain meds

that's like eight things, it could be worse :)

sorry that sounded glib, I was just being silly

i know!

to both of those posts

:D

if you can't be silly in the depression and suicide threads, what is the point?

kinda get paranoid about my reputation as little miss KIP, I never know if levity is a good or bad idea itt - but i yam what i yam, lol

always a good idea IMO

i just assume most of the people venturing into these threads already understands the true horror of living. it's not like the death wish ever goes away

what else can you do in the face of unceasing tragedy and hopelessness

one can only wrestle it like a pig in the mud and take yr lolz where you find them.

by watching hee-haw reruns, is what you're saying?

no. wrestling pigs.

damn i wish i went to therapy sooner. feels like my whole world is being deconstructed now, which is a good thing considering i've been miserable the majority of my life, but it's also kinda scary and hard to deal with. things are looking up at least.

it's also kinda scary and hard to deal with

This sounds promising. I say this free of irony. If it were easy and pleasant, you would have overcome these obstacles long, long ago. But it sound like you're dealing with the Gordian Knot, instead of a kinked garden hose.

Never underestimate the power of having a partial breakdown... Just the realization that I should be having the time of my life right now without work responsibility, but have instead spent four months being a saddo shut-in.

i'm right there with you man

I have a saddo shut-in club, yr all welcome to join.

i am sick of being a saddo shut-in, but that's not going to likely change until my money situation sorts itself out.

i think that's what's been so weird and frustrating about this round of depression. it's not the vague, inexplicable, all-encompassing, better-off-dead feeling i've had before, at various points since i was a kid, even when times are good. it's entirely explicable and contextual. i'm broke, i'm despairing of lack of options, i'm letting a lot of people i care about deeply because of it, and i can't see any way out of the snarl my life has become. it's depression simply because things external to me seem so insurmountable, not because anything internal has gone haywire. emotionally, i am actually pretty fucking happy, at least when not in the grip of panic and "well, there's always throwing yourself under a bus" over all this stuff, and i have a lot to be thankful for. and i am. i'm in love ffs, which is amazing (if insanely complicated in its own way) and tbh is often the only thing keeping me going these days. if all this shit could get sorted, i'd be in a pretty good place. but it's a horrible six-car-pile-up-mess, and so it's inducing the same EVERYTHING IS HOPELESS bullshit i get from my standard depression.

that said, not much to do but keep on pushing. everything's not hopeless. which didnt stop me from getting laid out with existential despair last night for a couple hours. but you keep going. you hangbonto the good shit. of which i have to remind myself there is a lot.

It's hard to do, but being a depressed lump of apathy should be taken out of doors and aired out from time to time in the quietest spot you can locate. There is something about being depressed in fresh air and daylight that starts one's thoughts leading toward a way out.

Aimless will you host an ilx retreat in a cabin in the PacNW woods someday?

Would retreat!

yeah i have always been a regular walk-taker but they're averaging two to three hours these days, every day. they do help a lot.

can't say the time of year is helping much either. oh it's dark by 4:30? well goody.

I am a most unpromising person to lead a retreat. That implies I would exert some kind of leadership muscle and tell people things they need to hear, so persuasively that they would listen and be improved somehow. A more likely outcome is I would listen to them haltingly try to explain why everything is so bad and hateful, commiserate with them, and be intermittently chirpy and awkward.

Then I would help people find some firewood so we could all spend an evening roasting in front and freezing our behinds, staring morosely at the flames. My experience is that a good life must be coaxed into shape, like a sand castle, except the sand arrives on grain at a time. Not much surprise that even the best ones are rather grossly misshapen.

So there with ya on the broke saddo shut-in

...you hangbonto the good shit...

On the plus side, if you ever need to replace "strongo"...

i blame my phone and my fat fingers.

for everything.

another BSSC member over here

I hate the way I sound when I hear myself talking in therapy. Blaaaaah

So, I've been waiting for a moment on here when it didn't seem like I would be rubbing in it, but, as of the last month or so, I'm doing pretty fucking okay! I've been getting out into the world, going to shows and going on dates, and feeling a lot better about myself. I don't know the exact inciting incident (it might have been Sandy, I'm a little ashamed to say, as a week stuck in my apartment really made me reevaluate things), but I've been trying hard to keep it up. Riding my bike whenever I can, doing yoga once a week, trying to hold my head high and do things that might have been socially impossible before but are only socially difficult now... it seems to be working. I've even reconnected with a lot of the people I felt so horrendous about not talking to.

Maybe the biggest thing I've realized: I'm almost glad I've been through these terrible depressions. As much as I've lost, I have an ability to imagine that other people maybe aren't operating at their peak potential, to (at least sometimes) treat them with a kind of compassion that I don't think I would have if I hadn't been through all this. And I'm still me! I've still got my cynicism. I haven't become a foolish blind optimist, the fear of which (at least for me) was one of the many things that kept me from trying to get better.

I'm definitely not out of the woods. Hell, winter hasn't even officially started. But I'm genuinely, actively glad I'm not dead, and that's something I haven't had for a long time and that I really, really don't want to lose.

Thanks to everyone who's said nice things and just made me feel like I wasn't totally alone here.

hey emilys, how'd it go?

as of the last month or so, I'm doing pretty fucking okay!

i'm doing okay too, which seems weird. i always tread carefully when i come close to feeling happy, because it means something awful is about to happen. i mean, historically, that has been the case. i would make a terrible bipolar cuz i never let those highs come through.