Perfect
I normally don’t post graphics like this because it feels like I’m snaking other people’s work, but this is too important to pass up.
Mental illness is a fight. Every day you are fighting against yourself to be better or to do better. Every day you struggle against what your mind is telling you. Your worst enemy is your own mind which insists on telling you awful things about yourself. Sometimes it gets too exhausting.
I’ve been there exhausted from the fight. I swing high, and I swing low. Low swings are difficult. It is a constant barrage of self loathing, lack of energy, lack of motivation, and paranoia. Adding something like hormones to the mix and it can all be too much.
I’ve found myself wanting to not be here anymore. I’ve wanted to just not exist. The pain, self-loathing, and paranoia has held me tight before trapped in their hands like a bug to be stared at and shaken between two palms. I’d get so worn down by my brain telling me I was worthless, nobody would be effected by my loss, I’d never do anything of worth anyway, it would be so easy just to disappear anyway. That place is so dark and scary, its hard to describe it accurately. Its a bit like hiking a trail with a steep drop off. You know the slightest wrong move will send you plunging over the edge, and part of you wouldn’t mind so much.
There is always that spark in me which doesn’t want to go. That spark reminds me when things aren’t so bad, and I’m not ready to go yet. Most of the time I can grab onto that spark and use it to help me survive just long enough to get through the darkness.
Sometimes, though, that spark is so dim I have to find an outside rope or even an outside thread. With my brains screaming about no one caring if I was gone and how me being here makes no difference to anyone, I ask someone I love if they’d miss me if I were gone and I pluck that thread and hang on to it until I ride through it all.
I don’t feel weak for having these periods of my life. There is no shame in them. I kept fighting.
Geeks a Geeking