#and they say I'm their best friend but just feels like a hollow platitude | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

idletransgenderfication · 6 years

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about "better"

a close friend of mine just got released from a mental ward the other day, and it got me thinking about the phrase "it gets better," and what it means to me. first off, let me apologize for how long this is. it may have mistakes, or end up repetitive at times, but it's my best attempt at conveying a sentiment that's kept me alive, so it would mean a lot to me it if you would try to read it anyway, especially if you or someone you know is struggling to maintain hope with their own mental illness right now.

i guess there's something i've wanted to say lately, that's been bugging me just a bit. when i say things like "it gets better," people often brush them off as meaningless words. but i don't mean it as a hollow platitude—and to infer it as such, feels to me, like you aren't really understanding what i'm trying to say.

when i say "it gets better" to you, i am not talking as a neurotypical who thinks happiness is a choice and that mental illness is a lack of discipline or willpower. i am not speaking as someone with no frame of reference as to what you're going through. i am speaking from experience, as someone who once easily brushed off the concept of "better" as well.

i am speaking as someone with years of history battling severe and long lasting episodes of depression. i am speaking as someone who was diagnosed with symptoms before i even left grade school, someone, who in only 17 years of life, managed to become an infamous name among local behavioral health clinics as one of the most treatment resistant cases they had ever known. it got to the point where every professional i was referred to recognized my name in advance—that's how much of a head-scratcher i was considered.

i've been on every med in the book—seriously, name any med you're taking for mental health reasons, and there's a 97% chance they tried me on it at some point. whenever my friends mention a prescription they're taking, i can recognize the name right off the bat. i've been on practically all of them, generally at the highest doses they're legally allowed to prescribe. hardly any of them worked, and the ones that did rarely lasted long. last winter, my condition had deteriorated so much that they were very seriously considering trying me, then a 16 year old minor, on the already highly experimental Electroconvulsive therapy—a treatment for which virtually no data exists on how it affects still developing brains. that and lithium are just about the only things i can name that they didn't try—and if things hadn't started getting better when they did, it would only have been a matter of time.

the one reason i was never hospitalized, funnily enough, is that our insurance didn't cover it. that and the fact that through it all, i was only ever actively suicidal once, which was actually years before my most recent, most severe episode. but that's a story for other time.

so when i say "it gets better," i'm speaking as someone who's spent great lengths of time unable to comprehend what better would even be. i'm speaking as someone who knows how terribly far away and fake those words sound—and yet, i'm still saying them. they sound so fake, because when you've lost ability to remember what "okay" was, "better" seems like something that can't possibly exist for you. maybe for someone else, but surely not you. it does, though—you need to believe that, and continue to strive for it, even when you can't recall what it felt like to laugh or cry or feel anything at all but the dull ache of emptiness.

so please don't give up on happiness. some of us have to fight tooth and nail for it, and that fight might never really end—but it still exists, and it is obtainable. even if it's only caught in brief snatches, between long lapses of darkness—it exists, and you can find it. no one can live a life that's happy all the time—and that's not what "better" is. better is just being alive, laughing and crying, feeling the full range of emotions a human is meant to. it's the beautiful periods of a long and harrowing life that give it meaning—and it is worthwhile. so don't stop clawing your way ahead, towards a "better" you still can't see or comprehend.

when i say "it gets better," i'm asking that you don't give up just yet. i'm asking you as someone who knows how impossibly hard it feels, who can't blame anyone for choosing to give in, that you continue to hold out just a sliver of hope, and trust in something you can't see just yet. the present may be unbearable, and the past may be miserable, but the future is still unknowable. when i say "it gets better," i'm asking you to pull yourself through one more day, believing tomorrow might be just a bit more bearable—because one day, it will be. those aren't just hollow words—it's a promise to you, and to myself, for the day when those words feel fake again.

so when i say "it gets better," i mean it. i really do, more than you can understand without hearing why. they aren't just empty words. i'll keep believing in them, through the times when i can't remember what "better" means. that's my promise to myself, and it's the reason i'm still here today to tell you it—so please don't call that shallow. don't give up on yourself just yet, even when the world seems to have given up on you. it will get better yet.

#mental health #mental illness #depression #recovery #bee babbles

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medicinemane · 2 years

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I don't know, if I'm blunt when I see all this advice about how to fix yourself the truth is that I just feel like... was the trailer not enough? Is me getting a house and reducing my cost of living, moving everything I own and a lot of things that aren't mine, is that not enough?

Is the fact that I want to die every single day, but I keep going with the mentality of that I don't know when I'll finally get around to it so I'd better keep trying to work on things... is that not enough?

To the best of my knowledge I don't turn people away or shut people out. Yes, I fail. I constantly fail. My life is a long string of failures and I'm nowhere near good enough. I tend to keep to myself, I fail to look after things. I know it's nowhere near good enough

But... what more do you people want from me. I've done what I can, I keep doing the meager amount I can. It's not enough, it's a pathetic amount, but it's all I have to offer, and all I ever hear is how I haven't fixed myself enough

There's always some list of things you're supposed to be doing differently, but I do almost all of those things anyway, I always was. If I have to fix everything including myself on my own then leave me to it, don't offer advice on all the ways I'm falling short on that too

I've done this all alone since... almost literally forever. The few friends I have on here are more friends than I had at any other point in my life. I was alone as a kid, alone as a teen, and alone as an adult. My whole life has been lived just like when quarantine hit, and it wasn't by choice but that's the way things worked out. I wasn't really allowed to leave the house, and I've frankly always been only an option for people when all other plans fall through, and that's just the way things are sometimes

Despite all that I've never cut myself or anything. I can't say I haven't self harmed because who knows what people's definitions are, and I've certainly pounded my head with the heels of my hands. I've never done anything permanent though. I've never made an attempt. I just... sit through a lot of nights, foolishly just riding things out

I don't make self deprecating jokes, but I have come to loath myself. There was a time when I'd gotten rid of all the negative voices, but that was nearly a decade ago and it's so much worse than it was before then. I wake up and my first thought of the day is often how much I hate myself. I'm just so useless. I could have so much if I'd simply reach out my hand and take action, but every day I fail to do any of it and I can't stand myself for it

But in spite of that I just get so sick of all the advice. I'm already doing every bit of it I can manage, and what I can't manage may be due to my own shortcomings, but I don't know what to tell you. Can't or won't, it's not happening

So yes, this is absolutely idiotic to complain about, but here it is. I get so tired of all the things saying how people need to self care or heal or whatever who get so hostile towards people who push back against it, What else would you have me do? List the ways I'm falling short for you, and then realize that changes nothing because that's not changing any time soon

I can only manage to do things in my own way at my own pace, and stupid as all that is... that's the only way it happens. You want me to have a new perspective, then show me, because where I'm standing... everything I say is true. I know my evidence is warped, but it's all I have to go off of, and hollow platitudes really fail to give me anything new to work with

#mm tag so i can find things later #it's not as if I hide a single thing here or ever really have #I more or less put my thoughts out in the open at all times #but frankly I could walk into a room with a gun in my mouth and people would just be like #hey don't do that... it would make me feel guilty if you died #and then leave me to my own devices #anyway... it's like I keep trying to say I'm actually a very bitter and cruel person #I just have enough manners to try and keep it to myself to avoid making people who haven't really done anything feel like shit #but broken as it is this is my perspective on the world #and not once has anyone ever given me a reason to change my mind #because not once has it seemed like anyone offering advice actually understood the situation they were trying to offer advice about

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