Let's start out today with the obvious statements, ones that I've probably either strongly implied or outright stated in previous posts:
The way I live my life at the moment is not anything I would consider "livable." I am an adult who has lived semi-independently and who now lives at home with a fairly demanding but lovely roommate and kind, lenient landlords and several other house-mates who at times make things either very difficult or very easy for me. I am fed, I am clothed, I am provided with a place to sleep. I am grateful for all these things and more that my family offers me.
But I am not happy. These things should make me happy. I am taken care of, I have people who love me, I am in treatment for my issues.
What would make me happy? The answer: I don't know.
So many people live miserable lives. They are lonely and scared, as I often am. They do not have the luxury of food on the table, hot water to wash with, clean water to drink, flushing toilets, clothing that protects them from the elements. Women (and sometimes men) live with men (and sometimes women) who assault and abuse them. Children starve in the streets and countries are run with brutal military force. Silent victims fall every day to disease, starvation, abuse, and all of the world's worst calamities.
Some people have been betrayed by family or friends. Some people have had their hearts broken. Some people have had to watch the ones they love die and weren't able to do anything about it. Some people have all of the terrible things happen to them and none of the good things.
I should be grateful for what I have. I should be content with my lot, because I am not a woman in the Middle East who has had a bucket of acid thrown at my face. I am not a woman dying of AIDS somewhere in Africa. I am a woman who lives in middle-class America and who has a lovely family and food and clothes and a home.
None of this makes me happy. If anything, it makes me more miserable, because I do not feel as though I have the right to be unhappy. I feel guilty for being unhappy, because there are people in this world who have their towns blown up with bombs or stormed by soldiers with guns, there are people in this world who are starving slowly for lack of generosity by those who can afford it, there are people who cannot marry those who they love because it is illegal, there are people who are afraid to walk on the street because the color of their skin could get them shot. I am a white, straight, middle-class, able-bodied woman who lives in a democracy and has everything provided for her. I have so much privilege in this world and I should have NOTHING to complain or be unhappy about.
I have come to learn that some things defy privilege and class.
Depression does not care that I am white. It says, The color of your skin does not matter, for you are disgusting anyway.
Depression does not care that I am a cisgender heterosexual female. It says, It does not matter who you love, for nobody will ever consider you worthy of love.
Depression does not care that I am middle-class. It says, The contents of your bank account do not matter, because the things you want cannot be bought with money and you will never have them anyway.
Depression does not care that I have a healthy, active body. It says, Death will claim you in the end, as I have done, and it is pointless to try to improve yourself when you will only be leaving this mortal shell anyway.
Depression does not care that I live in a country where freedom is valued. It says, You do not deserve to have choices, and so I have taken away your ability to make them.
Anxiety does not care about any of these things either, but the messages are different. Here the weapon of choice is not lethargy, but guilt. You've got so much, why are your worrying about it? You can't go to institute, someone might talk to you and then you'll do something horrible like throw up or cry or faint. You can't get married, you'll saddle someone else with all your problems and why should you be allowed to get married when some of your friends can't get married either? You can't afford to leave home, you can't afford to finish college, you can't afford to get your own place, you can't even afford to buy books or music to take away some of the pain. You are fat and ugly and no amount of exercise could possibly improve anything about you. Oh, look, another pimple. Great, something else you have to worry about. And on top of all this, you're so self-absorbed you don't even think about how your sadness makes your family feel. What if you're making them feel bad that they can't do anything for you?
Only that delicate combination of the two could possibly contrive to make me feel as though it's my fault that my gay friends cannot get married in some states. As though I, by virtue (or lack thereof) of being a straight woman, have singlehandedly brought about the circumstances in which my friends are not permitted in certain areas of the country to be married. Only depression and anxiety could make me believe that it is my fault.
My mother says that I experience empathy for others, and that's why it's so hard for me. I guess I do. It's not really empathy, though. I'm a frigid, selfish human being. I only want others to have what I can have because I can't have it. I am not good enough. I am not even good at all.
When I get to this point, I usually go to bed and shut my blanket-fort-tent-thing up and cry for a while. Sometimes I go to sleep. Sometimes I go downstairs and, diet be screwed, I eat Nutella or ice cream or something with a lot of carbohydrates and a lot of delicious. Sometimes I listen to music or write a story or read a funny book. And sometimes, that makes me feel better.
Sometimes, it doesn't.
Sometimes, I get to the point where all of these feelings are so overwhelming that I just have to stop feeling things. I detach, disengage, break away. At these times, I become a hideous caricature of myself. My mother has told me that sometimes I am cruel. Today, for instance, I was annoyed at something that my little brother was doing and I told him, "Nobody's listening, nobody cares, just shut up," and he felt so bad that he cried. Because he has this thing where he thinks I'm awesome, when clearly, I do not deserve to be called awesome. I haven't apologized for it yet, but he seems to have forgiven me. He's a very sensitive child, but he's also surprisingly resilient. I'm always afraid I'm going to break him. But I forgot that today, when I detached, and I cut him with my words and he turned out all right. Wounded, but all right. I don't even know if I will apologize. I don't even know if I want to.
Last night, I had this overwhelming feeling of happiness. God was like, "You know what? Everything will turn out okay in the end." I was so happy that I cried. I laid in bed playing solitaire on my iPod and I cried. It was all going to be okay!
Today was not good. I sat with my family on our weird couches for four hours listening to General Conference and feeling guilty the whole time because everything they were saying was meant for me to hear but I don't think I can do any of it because I suck at being a person let alone a good person and something frightening and inconvenient happened with my sister (no details for privacy) and I was grumpy and snapped at my brother and I have a cankersore forming in my mouth despite the fact that I have been very diligent about brushing my teeth and I feel gross and worthless and I can't find that feeling I had last night. Nothing is going to be okay, nothing will ever be okay, how on earth could you ever think that?????
I re-read my patriarchal blessing the other day. It says I'm going to have a joyous life like, eleven times. I counted. At times like this, that feels ridiculous. It's possible that I've gotten to the point where that blessing doesn't apply to me anymore because I'm such a sad, awful mess.
Sometimes I think I shouldn't be confessing these things here on a fairly public blog. Women are already perceived as weak, I don't need to contribute to that god-awful stereotype.
And really, me having a blog at all is something I do so that I can complain to people about how my life sucks without doing anything productive about it. It's rehashing the trials I have to live, over and over again. It's probably really annoying.
I am at a standstill. There are paths in all directions and I am too paralyzed to choose even one. Everything is pushing, demanding. "You must choose! You must be responsible for your life!"
I can't even be responsible for what my own body decides to do. I don't know how anybody ever expects me to be responsible with anything else.
The point I am attempting to make with these rambling, depressing statements about my life is that I am a massive pile of negative emotion, amplified further by feelings of unworthiness and guilt and feelings about my feelings, which is a whole other meta-commentary mess, and I am ultimately, as we all are, human.
But I am choosing. I choose very small things. I choose to eat cheese, which is allowed on my diet, instead of bread, which is not allowed on my diet. I choose to brush my teeth even when that cankersore is driving me distracted with pain. I choose to take a shower even if I'm not going anywhere.
[Skip the following if descriptions of potential suicide bother you; if you want to read it, then you can highlight it.]
I choose not to empty my whole bottle of ibuprofen down my throat and call it done. I choose not to jump headfirst out of the window of my room. I choose not to slit my wrists and bleed out in the shower. I choose not to walk into the path of a truck. I think about these things and more every day, but I don't do it.
And each day I think maybe that it doesn't matter what I choose. Maybe life is just hopeless crap and we're all going to die.
But what matters is that I choose to live, I choose not to die, and even though I am occasionally miserable enough that death sounds really nice, I still choose life.
That, for me, is what makes my life "livable." The fact that I would rather be here than dead, most of the time. That is what makes it okay for me to keep on breathing. I might feel like utter crap all the time, but I still choose to be here.
And depression and anxiety can talk at me all they want. They are not me. I am not them. They are a part of me, they are something that has changed me in ways I do not like and do not want. They are not cancer but they eat at my soul the way cancer eats at the body, catching on to new parts of myself and growing and twisting to suit themselves, a side effect of choosing to live.
I am living a life that to anybody else might not be livable. And I'm glad of that. Nobody should have to experience what I am going through. I would not wish that on my worst enemy.
And it might not be properly livable, not now, not yet, not for a long time. I'm just going to get by on my drugs and my therapist and my family and hope that for now it will be enough.
But it's mine.
I chose it.
I choose to live.
- I have depression.
- I also have anxiety.
- Struggling with these issues has been extremely difficult for me and resulted in me coming just short of a college degree before being completely overwhelmed by the idea of, well, life and having to go home to recuperate. (December 2014 - present)
- I take medicine for my issues but that doesn't solve everything.
- I go to therapy for my issues but that also doesn't solve everything.
- I am in no way, shape, or form an expert on the subject of either depression or anxiety. I speak from my own experiences.
Are we good on this? Okay? Okay. Cool.
The way I live my life at the moment is not anything I would consider "livable." I am an adult who has lived semi-independently and who now lives at home with a fairly demanding but lovely roommate and kind, lenient landlords and several other house-mates who at times make things either very difficult or very easy for me. I am fed, I am clothed, I am provided with a place to sleep. I am grateful for all these things and more that my family offers me.
But I am not happy. These things should make me happy. I am taken care of, I have people who love me, I am in treatment for my issues.
What would make me happy? The answer: I don't know.
So many people live miserable lives. They are lonely and scared, as I often am. They do not have the luxury of food on the table, hot water to wash with, clean water to drink, flushing toilets, clothing that protects them from the elements. Women (and sometimes men) live with men (and sometimes women) who assault and abuse them. Children starve in the streets and countries are run with brutal military force. Silent victims fall every day to disease, starvation, abuse, and all of the world's worst calamities.
Some people have been betrayed by family or friends. Some people have had their hearts broken. Some people have had to watch the ones they love die and weren't able to do anything about it. Some people have all of the terrible things happen to them and none of the good things.
I should be grateful for what I have. I should be content with my lot, because I am not a woman in the Middle East who has had a bucket of acid thrown at my face. I am not a woman dying of AIDS somewhere in Africa. I am a woman who lives in middle-class America and who has a lovely family and food and clothes and a home.
None of this makes me happy. If anything, it makes me more miserable, because I do not feel as though I have the right to be unhappy. I feel guilty for being unhappy, because there are people in this world who have their towns blown up with bombs or stormed by soldiers with guns, there are people in this world who are starving slowly for lack of generosity by those who can afford it, there are people who cannot marry those who they love because it is illegal, there are people who are afraid to walk on the street because the color of their skin could get them shot. I am a white, straight, middle-class, able-bodied woman who lives in a democracy and has everything provided for her. I have so much privilege in this world and I should have NOTHING to complain or be unhappy about.
I have come to learn that some things defy privilege and class.
Depression does not care that I am white. It says, The color of your skin does not matter, for you are disgusting anyway.
Depression does not care that I am a cisgender heterosexual female. It says, It does not matter who you love, for nobody will ever consider you worthy of love.
Depression does not care that I am middle-class. It says, The contents of your bank account do not matter, because the things you want cannot be bought with money and you will never have them anyway.
Depression does not care that I have a healthy, active body. It says, Death will claim you in the end, as I have done, and it is pointless to try to improve yourself when you will only be leaving this mortal shell anyway.
Depression does not care that I live in a country where freedom is valued. It says, You do not deserve to have choices, and so I have taken away your ability to make them.
Anxiety does not care about any of these things either, but the messages are different. Here the weapon of choice is not lethargy, but guilt. You've got so much, why are your worrying about it? You can't go to institute, someone might talk to you and then you'll do something horrible like throw up or cry or faint. You can't get married, you'll saddle someone else with all your problems and why should you be allowed to get married when some of your friends can't get married either? You can't afford to leave home, you can't afford to finish college, you can't afford to get your own place, you can't even afford to buy books or music to take away some of the pain. You are fat and ugly and no amount of exercise could possibly improve anything about you. Oh, look, another pimple. Great, something else you have to worry about. And on top of all this, you're so self-absorbed you don't even think about how your sadness makes your family feel. What if you're making them feel bad that they can't do anything for you?
Only that delicate combination of the two could possibly contrive to make me feel as though it's my fault that my gay friends cannot get married in some states. As though I, by virtue (or lack thereof) of being a straight woman, have singlehandedly brought about the circumstances in which my friends are not permitted in certain areas of the country to be married. Only depression and anxiety could make me believe that it is my fault.
My mother says that I experience empathy for others, and that's why it's so hard for me. I guess I do. It's not really empathy, though. I'm a frigid, selfish human being. I only want others to have what I can have because I can't have it. I am not good enough. I am not even good at all.
When I get to this point, I usually go to bed and shut my blanket-fort-tent-thing up and cry for a while. Sometimes I go to sleep. Sometimes I go downstairs and, diet be screwed, I eat Nutella or ice cream or something with a lot of carbohydrates and a lot of delicious. Sometimes I listen to music or write a story or read a funny book. And sometimes, that makes me feel better.
Sometimes, it doesn't.
Sometimes, I get to the point where all of these feelings are so overwhelming that I just have to stop feeling things. I detach, disengage, break away. At these times, I become a hideous caricature of myself. My mother has told me that sometimes I am cruel. Today, for instance, I was annoyed at something that my little brother was doing and I told him, "Nobody's listening, nobody cares, just shut up," and he felt so bad that he cried. Because he has this thing where he thinks I'm awesome, when clearly, I do not deserve to be called awesome. I haven't apologized for it yet, but he seems to have forgiven me. He's a very sensitive child, but he's also surprisingly resilient. I'm always afraid I'm going to break him. But I forgot that today, when I detached, and I cut him with my words and he turned out all right. Wounded, but all right. I don't even know if I will apologize. I don't even know if I want to.
Last night, I had this overwhelming feeling of happiness. God was like, "You know what? Everything will turn out okay in the end." I was so happy that I cried. I laid in bed playing solitaire on my iPod and I cried. It was all going to be okay!
Today was not good. I sat with my family on our weird couches for four hours listening to General Conference and feeling guilty the whole time because everything they were saying was meant for me to hear but I don't think I can do any of it because I suck at being a person let alone a good person and something frightening and inconvenient happened with my sister (no details for privacy) and I was grumpy and snapped at my brother and I have a cankersore forming in my mouth despite the fact that I have been very diligent about brushing my teeth and I feel gross and worthless and I can't find that feeling I had last night. Nothing is going to be okay, nothing will ever be okay, how on earth could you ever think that?????
I re-read my patriarchal blessing the other day. It says I'm going to have a joyous life like, eleven times. I counted. At times like this, that feels ridiculous. It's possible that I've gotten to the point where that blessing doesn't apply to me anymore because I'm such a sad, awful mess.
Sometimes I think I shouldn't be confessing these things here on a fairly public blog. Women are already perceived as weak, I don't need to contribute to that god-awful stereotype.
And really, me having a blog at all is something I do so that I can complain to people about how my life sucks without doing anything productive about it. It's rehashing the trials I have to live, over and over again. It's probably really annoying.
I am at a standstill. There are paths in all directions and I am too paralyzed to choose even one. Everything is pushing, demanding. "You must choose! You must be responsible for your life!"
I can't even be responsible for what my own body decides to do. I don't know how anybody ever expects me to be responsible with anything else.
The point I am attempting to make with these rambling, depressing statements about my life is that I am a massive pile of negative emotion, amplified further by feelings of unworthiness and guilt and feelings about my feelings, which is a whole other meta-commentary mess, and I am ultimately, as we all are, human.
But I am choosing. I choose very small things. I choose to eat cheese, which is allowed on my diet, instead of bread, which is not allowed on my diet. I choose to brush my teeth even when that cankersore is driving me distracted with pain. I choose to take a shower even if I'm not going anywhere.
[Skip the following if descriptions of potential suicide bother you; if you want to read it, then you can highlight it.]
I choose not to empty my whole bottle of ibuprofen down my throat and call it done. I choose not to jump headfirst out of the window of my room. I choose not to slit my wrists and bleed out in the shower. I choose not to walk into the path of a truck. I think about these things and more every day, but I don't do it.
And each day I think maybe that it doesn't matter what I choose. Maybe life is just hopeless crap and we're all going to die.
But what matters is that I choose to live, I choose not to die, and even though I am occasionally miserable enough that death sounds really nice, I still choose life.
That, for me, is what makes my life "livable." The fact that I would rather be here than dead, most of the time. That is what makes it okay for me to keep on breathing. I might feel like utter crap all the time, but I still choose to be here.
And depression and anxiety can talk at me all they want. They are not me. I am not them. They are a part of me, they are something that has changed me in ways I do not like and do not want. They are not cancer but they eat at my soul the way cancer eats at the body, catching on to new parts of myself and growing and twisting to suit themselves, a side effect of choosing to live.
I am living a life that to anybody else might not be livable. And I'm glad of that. Nobody should have to experience what I am going through. I would not wish that on my worst enemy.
And it might not be properly livable, not now, not yet, not for a long time. I'm just going to get by on my drugs and my therapist and my family and hope that for now it will be enough.
But it's mine.
I chose it.
I choose to live.
I just want you to know that I read these blog posts and I love you and I miss you.
ReplyDeleteI love you, too. Also the next time you're home we should totally hang out and stuff.
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