#not to be depressed but until recently i was willing to die for the smallest thing dying for a loved one is like. a more noble cause tbh

[moodymurda]

about a boy pt 3

tw: alludes to sexual assault

you entered my life at a time where you had no business being there in the capacity that you tried to be. i was 15. extremely depressed and trapped in what i thought was a hole i couldn’t possibly dig myself out of. i was not kind or pleasant. i was not loving like i am now. i was cold, mean, uninterested, unmoved by most. it took a lot to get a frown out of me and even more to get even the smallest smile. i only know what emptiness truly feels like because of that place i was in. everything i encountered went in one ear and out the other. every person i interacted with were simply things to occupy my time until i decided i didn’t want it occupied anymore.

the first time we spoke was on twitter. i find that amusing because though we went to the same highschool, i still first conversed with you on twitter. it seems that almost every person that has had a significant impact on my life, came from twitter. i remember it was over the winter break. i enjoyed poking fun at you and teasing you. you made yourself such an easy target. you were so sensitive. and back then i found sensitivity to be a sign of weakness. i laughed at it. i laughed at you. you ended up working your way into my heart kinda. i genuinely started to care about you. which was weird to me bc i didn’t really care for anything or anyone. i didn’t like you how i ended up realizing you liked me. i wasn’t interested in guys yet. that’s partially why it took me so long to realize you liked me. i became interested relationships n stuff later than most of my peers lmao.

i just thought you were cool. i made that clear, i thought. i remember you spilling your heart to me often. and i’d say that i appreciated that u felt that way for me. you’d ask me to do it back and i would tell you i couldn’t bc i didn’t know how. you didn’t believe me, you thought i just didn’t want to. i wasn’t lying... i genuinely didn’t know how. but i tried for you bc it’s what you wanted from me. it was difficult but i tried. you asked me to be your girlfriend more than once. eventually i had just said yes bc i wanted you to stop asking me. i told u not to blow it up. that it didn’t need to be all around school n stuff. ppl didn’t even really talk to me like that and i liked it. i liked not getting attention. but when you happened attention came with it. it made me sick. i didn’t get why anyone cared if they never cared about me otherwise. why was this such a hot topic. i didn’t get it.

i remember breaking up w you hella times. telling you never speak to me again hella times. i knew that me saying yes to make you stop asking was wrong and i had to fix it. all the faking i did to make u happy was wrong. wrong to do to a person. wrong to do to myself. i wasn’t doing a good deed. i was being a coward. i was torturing both of us. it was like i couldn’t reverse it. you weren’t hearing me. you weren’t accepting what i said. it was like the universe was forcing me to deal with it. you’d cried to me on more than one ocassion about how you needed me. how sometimes you felt like you wanted to die. at the time i guessed i deserved that bc i got myself in the mess in the first place. i knew i couldn’t just cut you off. i couldn’t risk being a reason you weren’t okay, making me an even more terrible human. i didn’t realize then that you were fully manipulating me, whether you realized it or not. that’s what you did.

you made me do things i didn’t want to do. my first kiss was forced upon me by you. and i can never forget how sick and disgusting i felt when it happened. or how sick i felt the two other times i ever kissed you bc you kept begging. i remember one day at school you held me hella close and tight to you. you wouldn’t let me go until i would kiss you. so i did. i never let another guy touch me again until i was 19 yrs old. i didn’t even look at them. i had 2 guys friends throughout the rest of highschool. all other guys i talked to at school, i made sure to keep them at a distance. i didn’t do hugs. no touching me. don’t get too close. i was terrified. sometimes i’m still terrified. i do not trust men. that isn’t entirely your fault but you contributed to it. you wanted so many things from me that i couldn’t give you. and it seemed like you were willing to convince yourself that i wanted it to so that you could take it.

i remember the first time you kissed me you texted me later and asked if it was good for me too. i remember being so confused. because how could i have enjoyed you slamming your face onto mine like that and not stopping even though i tried to push you off of me. how did you genuinely think i enjoyed that?

you told me you loved me often. i didn’t know what that word meant then. i just knew it meant a lot. i knew i wasn’t someone anyone should love. i wasn’t someone anyone loved, myself included. i was confused bc you said “love” but you made me feel sick and gross. love isn’t supposed to be sick and gross... i knew that much.

i do not speak your name anymore. my friends and family tease me about you often, i beg and plead for them to stop. i never started telling anyone why until recently. i hate that i had to say why. i wish they would just not do it bc i asked that of them. there’s some parts of it i can’t tellpeople because i can’t bring myself to say it. don’t be mistaken, i don’t feel victimized by this at all. i hurt for that broken girl i was, but as of today i am not broken. i’m strong and i’m capable. life is meant to go on. this situation taught me that. thank u.

#me #ni #mal

[broadhurstblog-blog]

A rough draft/timeline...

Once upon a time, I was a quiet child, who excelled in sports and could string together good sentences every now and again.

I received a certificate at the end of my first year in a boy’s secondary school in East Hertfordshire, by my departing English teacher called Ms Prole. It was certified that I was  ‘Most Daydreaming Pupil.’

I was a child who lived inside his imagination, thought deeply about things. I had a fair amount of friends, most of them being at least two years older than me.

We would break into old bomb shelters, explore hard, found a small woods that contained concrete bunkers, and convinced ourselves we had discovered a secret, disused American airbases. I would go on long bike rides, often finding great secluded bodies of water that contained hard to catch fish. I played for a local bottom of the league football team, on often flooded fields that used to be paddocks.

Then something changed.My granddad died when I was twelve.Losing a wonderfully wise man whose wisdom I took for granted, well, it hit me really hard.My thoughts seemed to constantly focus on death.Over the course of the next year or so, my behaviour changed drastically, I became extremely undisciplined, argumentative, I got suspended from school on several occasions.With the help of an Educational Officer – psychiatrists and psychologists took an interest in me.After a few sessions with various medical professionals, my parents were informed with confidence that I had a condition called manic depression and that it was caused by a  chemical imbalance/ deficiency of a salt in my brain.After being sure that my heart, kidney or liver was free from defects, I was prescribed Lithium Carbonate.

I took the medication most days between the ages of 14 and 18.

At first, my behaviour did not improve, and it was decided that I should spend time in an adolescent unit of the psychiatric wing of a hospital near St. Albans.

It was a very strange place, most of the resident children there were unwanted orphans I seem to remember.

A lot of the nurses were very heavy-handed in their restraint techniques, and doctors loved nothing more than to sedate those of us not willing to take part in various group activities.

The heavy-handed ways, the use of an exclusion room and the sedation syrup, for even the smallest of infractions – it makes me question the ethics and morals of some of the staff, but nothing I was privy to was against the law as far as I can tell. (There has been stories in the news recently about the police investigating historic abuse allegations, I can’t testify to being abused, but it certainly wasn’t the holiday camp that the staff tried to portray to my parents. Maybe the memories of that place would have been a lot worse without a father and mother looking out for me).  

After a couple of months I was back to school.

I was the shadow of my former daydreaming self, but I no longer displayed as much unruly behaviour.

I had lost virtually all my friends, I was increasingly paranoid, socially withdrawn.

I was behind in my school work, and I wasn’t able to catch up.

By the time I was 15 I had the choice of resitting the year or joining another school out of the area 18 miles away, to be in the fourth form where nobody knew me.

So I opted to leave a pretty decent boys-only comp with a Christian ethos, to go to a mixed comp that used to be a grammar school, but which had become a third-rate egalitarian mess.

It is safe to say that I did not respond well to the lowering of educational standards. By the final term of my second attempt at being a fourth form pupil, I was ‘asked to leave’.

I left the school at the age of 16, without any experience of the fifth form. I went to the regional college for two years and completed a couple of NVQ modules in I.T.  

I spent most of my college time in the library or playing basketball in the gym.

The point here is that I am not convinced I was mentally ill.

Maybe I was, but I do not think that medication/psychiatric treatment helped me.

The major thing that helped me become a less self-destructive force was *time*.

The death of a close family member really haunted my mind, and I did not know how to deal with it.

My childish poetry turned dark and very cryptic, unfortunately, the caring adults in my life who were interpreting my private words without my permission, they were totally off the mark in concluding that my prose was a sign of me being suicidal. I was certainly crying out for help, but my words were actually full of fear about death, not a single syllable expressed a desire to die.

I wasn’t sleeping much, and prolonged lack of sleep can affect behaviour a lot,

I stopped playing football,

I stooped going on adventures,

I stopped daydreaming.

Lack of exercise can cause serious problems, especially in a child who was once very active.

Add puberty to the mix. . .

I do not think Lithium was the answer to whatever was happening. And how did the medication affect the development of my fragile brain?

I guess that question is impossible for me to ever answer.

I was lucky to have a good family GP who was close to retirement, a doctor from an older generation who was in agreement with me that I would be better off without medication.

As soon as I was eighteen he helped me gradually decrease my doses until I was on the medication no more.

I lacked a lot of confidence, but had no problem finding work with the occasional kick up the backside from my father.

After running into a few dead ends, I eventually became a cellarman/barman in an unusually well run small family pub that was slightly off the beaten track.

In my mid-twenties I moved to Manchester with my licensee certificate in hand, but instead of running a pub, I ended up working in a mind-numbing call centre on behalf of a royal Scottish bank.

By the age of 30, I was a homeowner.

On paper, things seemed good. I heard from a reliable source that my parents were proud of me.

I was unhappy. The relationship with my supposed future wife was on the rocks. I was tired of being a battery chicken trying to get people into debt. I was drinking too much. I had put on a lot of weight. I think I might have been slightly depressed.

Then one evening there was a TV show on, presented by Stephen Fry, it was about living with Bipolar Disorder (The new name for manic depression.)

I think it was on at about the same time that the disability discrimination act came into force.

I was struggling with timekeeping and discipline at work.

Home life was not happy. I was a little drunk and somehow became convinced it was a good idea to talk about my ‘mental health history’ with my partner, and to my manager at work the next day.

Things went downhill very quickly from there.

I went to a doctor, got referred to a psychiatrist.

After a 30 minute consultation, it was decided that I had a mild version of ‘Bipolar II’ And Lithium Carbonate was being prescribed to me. It didn’t agree with me, and I abruptly stopped taking it. Bad idea.

I was a mess. After about 2 years I had split with my partner, mindlessly took my name off the mortgage agreement. I struggled to stay in regular work because of my erratic self-destructive behaviour. I was on benefits for a couple of years.

Eventually, I got a job as an assistant manager, in a betting shop of all places. It was an interesting few years, but working for a morally challenged employer can eventually take its toll on one’s spirit.

This is when I ‘gave up’. I would get a sick note from my local medical centre once a month, claiming I was depressed, etc.I started claiming Employment Support Allowance and Housing Benefit because of my supposed ‘disability.’.The money was more than enough to exist on as part of a house share in a diverse student area in south-central Manchester. At some point a cannabis smoker moved into the house I was barely existing in.It didn’t become long before an occasional toke turned into a regular habit. It took a year or so, but I eventually became undoubtedly mentally ill. I was not self medicating, I smoked weed because I enjoyed smoking it, I loved getting ‘high.’  

My behavior gradually started changing for the worse over the course of about half a year. I went to doctors complaining of anxiety, panic attacks, insomnia etc. I told them about my cannabis habit too. The young funky doctor referred me to a young hip psychiatrist, who after 5 minutes of questions, decided that   Quetiapine may be the answer to my woes. I wasn’t getting any better, and I gradually stopped taking the medication. I started smoking cannabis again.    

I was under the influence of what I’ll call acute mania not long after reading ‘The Cameron Delusion.’ I am fortunate that was the last book I read before I became undeniably mentally ill.

At the height of my illness, it was like I was inside a vivid daydream like I was fast asleep and wide awake at the same time. It is hard to explain. I was aware I was ill though, I sought help. It was eventually decided I should be sectioned, and I disagreed, so a bunch of health workers accompanied by police officers came to my front door. One policeman with impeccable customer service skills informed me I would have to be restrained with cuffs for my own safety, and I was escorted into the back of a police van. The police chauffeured me to the hospital, where I became a reluctant resident/client in a locked ward for about 6 or 7 weeks.

I was forced to take a cocktail of 4 mind-altering drugs on a daily basis. A psychiatrist would see me for about five minutes, once a week. I was told after the sixth or seventh short consultation that I could be released under the condition that I carried on taking the drugs. A social worker visited me on two occasions in the two months after my release from the hospital. Assured I was taking the medication, the visits stopped. I didn’t mention to the social worker that I was gradually lowering the doses I was taking. Within days of the last visit, I had eventually weened myself of the medication completely. It took several months, but eventually, I got a job.

And I have been well, in full-time employment for about a year now, without any problems.

I don’t use cannabis anymore either of course.

And I haven’t knowingly talked to a doctor since my time in the hospital.Mind-altering drugs just do not agree with me.

#mental health #psychiatry #nhs #cannabis #lithium

[thelostandforgottenangel]

Beware this gets pretty deep and it hurts to type it but I needed to get it out ********************************

26,354 days

 You can’t live your life once you give up and once you get to the point that you want to die it becomes like a countdown… you don’t count the years anymore – you count the days

Every day you wake up and lie in bed wondering if it’s worth even getting out of the only place you want to be because you don’t know if you’ll be able to get up and go about what you have too

But when someone depends on you – Needs you for everything at every second of the day you have to move and force yourself up

People sit there and tell you it will get better but unless you’ve dealt with it you don’t know

If you have never struggled with depression you don’t know what it’s like to wake up one morning when your eight years old and realize there is nothing you would love more then to just fall asleep and never open your eyes again… Those people don’t know what it’s like to be a cutter and have someone tell you it’s all for attention - when really it’s the only thing that tells you you’re still alive and give the smallest bit of relief from the pain you are struggling to hide

I’ve been told to grow up and stop wearing my feelings on my shoulders, to stop trying to get pity from the world. Had people look at me like I’m a horrible person because I can’t move through life without wanting to die every other day even though I’m pushing on to function and provide for my kids who need me

Let me be the first to say I don’t want pity or attention - I never have and I never will because lets all be honest nobody would care

I know there are people out there just like me that feel this way too so I think this will help somebody to hear

I don’t care what people think of me because after all this time anything people think or say is probably kinder then what I tell myself on a daily basis

I don’t have confidents in myself, I think I’m ugly, I can’t believe in myself because all my life I’ve been put down and told I’m worthless so on a daily basis I say it to myself because it’s better than hearing it from somebody who is supposed to love you

At nine years old I had an entire class of 30 people (8, 9, and 10 year old kids) tell me in front of a teacher that if I was to die right then nobody would miss me and the best I could do was laugh and agree with them because I can’t show how danm much it hurts to hear it when I already knew it

From August 2000 all the way to September 14, 2010 I was depressed and suicidal. My parents never knew and to this day I don’t think they really know just how bad it was because they thought I was looking for attention it wasn’t until a year ago that my mother learned of the self-harm because I went to great lengths to hide the slashes I put on my body because I went so deep they stand out clearly

I tried everything I could to end my life from pills, poisons, to an attempted jump off the side of a building where a dear friend talked me down. All of that up to the point of that day in September when I went to work with the biggest smile on my face because earlier that day a person who was supposed to be my friend told me she wished I would just disappear. She wished I would die. It was that day I decided to go to work, do my best to get through the day and go home when everyone was asleep and kill myself

A bullet from a gun I could easily get in my own room sounded pretty permanent

But something happened two hours into my shift that stopped me from ending it all, and for a year it was like my life turned around – I still struggled but there was somebody there to make me think twice about picking up a razor blade and cutting even if I knew it would stop the invisible pain I was in

For 26,354 days I’ve got up, forced myself to function so I get through the day just clinging to the hope that someday I’ll be better, that I’ll wake up and the last six years will all be a nightmare

At 19 years old I was pushing 500 pounds and was getting close to that point where I wanted to drop dead and again something made me want to keep going

The day I found out I was four months pregnant with my daughter had to be the happiest day of my life because for three years we thought I was infertile and unable to have children – I was so happy it made me want to keep living just so I could meet her

Since then I’ve lost over 300 pounds and had another child

A few months ago I got approached by a man who heard me singing at work asking if I’d like to come and sing in his bar – get paid to sing in front of a crowd because he thought I was amazing… I actually thought he was playing a prank on me but for a moment I was excited and took his number

Then I got home and told someone important to me about it, made the mistake of asking him who would honestly want to hear me singing because I was still in shock his reply was pointing at my two kids who I have sung to every day since I was pregnant with them

Those are the two most important people in my life.

My two babies are the only reason I have for hanging on this long – but you would think the person I’ve been with for seven years could be supportive of one of the two things I love doing. Singing and art are my outlets now that I can’t cut

But every day is the same, him criticizing my voice because he gets sick of me singing and laughing at my sketches. The worst part is he doesn’t realize he’s doing it. This is the same person who in September of 2010 stopped me from committing suicide who proved me wrong and gave me a reason for living

I’ve been to doctors, I’ve looked for help but I’m not willing to take pills that will make me act one way. I was forced to see a therapist three years back while going through a program just to see where my mental health stood and when I went in I took my baby because she keeps me grounded and calm even when I want to fall apart

The woman that saw me was confused why I would bring a child to my session and wanted me to call somebody to come get her so she could see the “Real me” as she put it but I refused

After talking to me for three hours she tried to prescribe me three antidepressants before telling me I was severely depressed and/or bipolar and that my child seemed to be the one thing that made me happy… she wanted me to break down, to show her what it was like to be alone in my head

She wanted me on these pills bad – I refused to take them since I was on one at a young age and knew it made my suicidal impulses worse and before I left she made sure to tell me that it would only be a matter of time before my ‘fake happiness’ wouldn’t be enough because in her eyes I was doing something unhealthy for me

She even asked before I left her office what I would do when one day when my children were grown up no longer around to make me happy – I think I just shrugged and told her only time would tell

I recently lost my hair due to a chemical burn over my entire scalp and have been wearing bandanas for a few months to cover it because I don't like how I look now - in the last week I've been mistaken for a man and told I look like a street thug lesbian and it's dropped me into a whole new low I haven't been in since 2010

 Here it is 2017 and my kids are still keeping me here going strong even if I have my days that I want to give up and I don’t have an answer to her question… but I want to make sure that if anyone out there is suffering in a similar way and is close to losing hope I’m with you Maybe somebody could give me some advice on how to cope when all I have really wanted to do lately is cut again... I don't want my kids to see me break and I don't want to be on pills that will probably just make this worse

[existentialjourney-blog]

My Journey- existentialism, anxiety, derealization

Hello. I don’t know if anyone will ever read this, but if you are then hi! I am starting this blog as a way to gather my thoughts and track my mental health. I am currently going through severe existential anxiety, and it is causing a huge lack of motivation and a kind of depression. As I think of everything in such a big picture, I sometimes even struggle to find the point of getting out of bed. Everything seems so mundane and pointless in my life right now. I am at Drama School training to be an Actress. I have been passionate about acting for as long as I can remember. I started suffering with Anxiety when I was 13. But even through the hardest times, Acting was the one thing that I had to cling on to. That was my muse, purpose, and my confidence. It gave me reason to carry on and not let myself slip off the rails. I have potentional to really make something of myself and I am at one of London’s top accredited Drama Schools. However, last term I even had to miss days off because I was simply paralyzed with fear. My mind would go into complete panic and I couldn’t retain a normal thought anymore. I had suffered a bad spout or Derealization when I was 16 for the first time. I randomlly woke up after a house party, and all of a sudden nothing felt real. I was at a restaurant with my family, and everyone felt like they were somewhat different and distant. Like my mum was my mum and I knew that, but at the same time she wasn’t? I truely thought I had lost my mind. Thank god I had a close friend who had been through a similar thing and told me that I am real and I am okay and to look online at Dearealization / Depersonalisation. After 2 weeks, it wore off. I thought I was done with it. However, since that night, I really can’t remember the last time I was truely free, happy. Its like it has completley killed my ability to truely enjoy anything in the moment. Intense happiness follows with a thought of “wait what even is happiness”. It completley numbs the extremity of any emotion. For an actor, you can imagine, is proving hugely career crippling for me. It has killed my confidence, passion and motivation. Its like my brain focuses on a different topic every couple of weeks and I will not stop obssesing over it until I get the answer, which can never happen! For example the question popped into my head, whilst we were studying Shakespeare, “How is it possible for humans to truely feel anything this intensley? Is emotion even real? How do I know I can even feel anything at all?”. This obsession has lead me to believe that I do not care about anyone that I love, or anyone I even know. Or that I have absolutley no passion and that everything I do is just for the sake of not appearing like I have completley lost my shit. Sometimes it really fucking feels like I have. The sheet fact that I am going to die and its like all of this will dissapear, seems to be too big for me to comprehend. Its simply too big for me to live with. It has lead me to feeling litterally suicidal and on the brink of giving up at any given moment. However, I know that deep down there is a strong, intelligent and loving girl. She is not dissapeared. I have just been put in a real big trap. I think it is even way bigger than I have anticipated all these years. I have started reading up on spirituality because I know it is possible to turn this existential crises into positive energy. People have even told me that I am infact blessed I am able to truely question things and that is in fact a sign of sensitivity, intelligence and talent. However, i’d give anything to go back to being “normal”. I remember when I would genuinely feel pissed off because I didn’t like what we were having for dinner. Or that my friend was 20 minutes late. I would get SO excited for Christmas that it felt like the world was singing and dancing! All these everyday things would actually have an effect on me, and that would be that. No second thought. No giant hammer coming down to crush my real, human emotions and thoughts. No darkness. No greyness. No numbess. No feeling different, like i’m on the outside looking in. Hope. I must stay hopeful. I have got through some dark times in my life, and I will do so again. I just hurt right now, deep down. I might feel numb, but underneath it, I am heartbroken. Heartbroken that I can no longer taste the innocence and fire that I had as that bright, sparkey child. I thought the world was my oyster and everyday was a gift. I enjoyed even the smallest pleasures, like playing a game with my dad or walking my dog. I actually cared about my career and my life prospects and I was willing to work hard to get there. I didn’t eat pure shit because I actually cared about what I look like. Now I just see apperance as shallow and meaningless so I have gained alot of weight, which the other part of me really cares about. Its an endless cycle. I really really hope that one day, I can look back at this time and laugh. Laugh that I even stressed about these stupid, enomormous questions. Because the reality is that there is no answer. There is nobody who is going to say “THIS is your purpose and THIS is the meaning of life. THIS is why your here”. Because life is life. And I am still that young, firey girl I once was. I just have some things I need to work out. In the meantime I am going to litterally force myself to get into school everyday and on time. Yes it may be hard and I might not be able to reach my full potentional right now, which breaks my heart. But, nobody else but me in that school will understand just how much I have to fight just to be there, present. Nobody else needs to know. I know. I know the strength I posses and the battles that I have already won. I will find a therapist that suits me and will help me and together we will work out why I am so overwhelmed and distressed. I will perhaps try to open up to my family and friends more, which is something I have really struggled with recently. Always actually. Especially when I feel like reletionships aren’t real and that I don’t actually love anybody. I feel like people feel like that about me. But that is just my anxietys, and deep down I know that. Rather than trying to connect to people right now, because I am numb and weird, I try and remember the strong connections and emotions I would feel towards my loved ones in the past. I remember when I would look at them and think “i’d give anything for you” and my heart would almost burst out my chest. I remind myself of how that felt and remain hopeful that one day I will once feel that burning passion and emotion. When that day comes, my acting can also be free and I will also regain my motivation. Right now, its about pretending until my pretending one day will actually be full enjoyment and realness. I might not even realise that happening. I will update this blog regularly as it does feel like a weight of my shoulders. I will remember that this is not my fault. None of this is my fault. I will not judge myself. Instead I will accept the fact that I am actually going through a mental condition that is actually crippling me of my own personality. There are plenty of people who wouldn’t have been as strong as you and would have managed to achieve the things that you still have. One day you will help people who are having similar struggles and you will be a positive case and use your struggles to create positivity about the future. But right now, I hurt.