Up and Downs, and all the Sideways in between (Discussion welcome)

[Koren]

Where to go from here.....

Yesterday I was fine. Yesterday was the first day in about three months I haven't seriously concidered taking my own life. It put me in shock, so I wasn't happy, but yesterday I was okay and I was able to do things. Yesterday I could smile and laugh and it wasn't forced
Today undid all of that.
I don't even know what happened, I cant find a reason for it, but it was as if the switch that is my emotions suddenly flipped to down, to the blackness and i do not have the strength to push it back up. It is as if my memories are all fingers weighing down the other end, spectral weights that I cannot see to move, but are there none the less, just waiting to flash up in front of my eyes at an oppertune moment to cause my finger to slip, and lose grasp of the switch of my emotions, and finally take the option of that sweet release of not waking up.

I use to have my things. My things that made me happy. My things that just for an hour or two gave me sweet relief from my mind and my house, from my memories and my pain, from everything.
But he doesn't log on any more. And I'm having breakdowns and self harming at my happy thing. And she's ignoring me. And I know I've lost him. And she's now so much better then me and is taking everything.
All the things I had are gone for the most part. They are still there but its only a shadow of what it was. A twisted tainted shadow that I can no longer see through. It drags me down to know that I no longer have that escape, and to know that I've been losing it all along, I was just too blind to see it, and its my fault it to go to how it is.

Why do I bother fighting?

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A couple of hours after writing that intro above I'm no better but I'm calmer.
I started this blog mainly in the hopes of not reciving compassion, but to aid understanding. I have depression. It is bad. It always has been.
Only this year have I realised how bad it has been all along. But I feel its almost too late. Almost.
Im not looking for people to understand me but I want people to understand in general. I'm not going to make this consistantly morose and down. I'll be posting a variety of things. If I talk about one subject, the next time Im feeling 'okay' I would hope to go back and revisit it again to give myself and others the understanding on how just a simple shit can change everything.
Ive had so many PM's from people looking out for me. And I've sent off so many more looking out for others and giving perspectives on things that they may not have seen before and all I want to do is help.
But I also know there is selfishness behind this blog. I need somewhere to talk. To talk and not feel guilty or wrong for doing so or feel like I'm taking up space. This is my space to talk. Others can comment of course, but it just feels nice to have a space.

I'm sure something new will be coming along shortly.

[Koren]

How I'm feeling at the time of this post: Down - Just come out of a massive breakdown

I've always been alone. As a kid I just kind of accepted it. I didn't fit in with the adults who saw the body of a kid and liked all those cutsy names people like to call things that are little and young. I didn't fit in with the kids because even once they got past the fat blob of ugly that I am, they realised I had the mind of an adult and all closed up on me because they didn't know how to talk with someone who was outsmarting the teachers in grade two. Wow that sounds like bragging and yet im not, I always hated being smart because while it at least gave me something, it took away so much more from me. I loved most of my teachers, those that understood me, I hated the fact that they were the only ones that could.

Its only lately that the loniless had started to catch up with me. I'm now an adults mind in an adults body, but I have the social understanding and emotional capabilities of an infant. So now I have all the minds around me I could ever want, but no one can understand at all. Adults see a teen and think rebellious, and then they speak to me and think smart, but then they talk about more complex social stuff and dont understand why i dont understand. I get the same thing with my classmates. I'm still alone, but maybe I'm just at that age where being on the fringe of everything hurts. When people wont even try to let me in.
I can talk more about the loniless of depression and isolation and a variety of things, a lot more, but I'll leave it here for now, another post maybe.

But I don't think I can ever say before that I've felt unwanted, until that feeling raised its head the other week and now its lodged there, like an orb weaver spinning its webs to connect the misery in my mind.
I feel unwanted as a friend
I feel unwanted as a choir college
I feel unwanted as a peer student
I feel unwanted as a son/daughter

I feel unwanted.
And it makes me want to die feeling like there isn't a single point being here any more as no one wants me.
My cognitive mind knows that it isn't true. But that isn't the thing thats depressed.

Mum keeps telling me how Im making things hard on her and she shouldn't have to be this way around me and how I need to pick myself up as theres bigger troubles going on. My step dad wouldn't even realise the scars on my arms are from self harm. He doesn't realise much since he got off the drink,
My real father never wanted me, he just wanted bragging rights over his friends and a bribe over my mum, but then I never wanted him either, or all of the abuse that came with him.
My 'sister' doesn't want me, shes too scared to touch me or talk to me and she avoids issues that she has because she knows that I care and I will try and help and she doesn't want that, she just wants a brick wall to talk too
My friends all abandon me regularly. One of them I spent an hour talking to saying how much I miss them, only for him to run off and spend the entire time talking to my mum instead of me, becase of course she's so much better (but thats a different topic)
And my other friend decided to walk off on me to go talk to my 'sister'. And one of the other guys avoided me the entire day the other day. It was so painful watching everyone walk away from me.

I've never felt unwanted. But now I think back on it.... I cant remember ever feeling wanted either.....

[Koren]

Warning. This post about SELF HARM may be a trigger for some so please, be careful.

Feeling kinda numb right now

It upsets me when people hearing self harm and think of cutting.
I know its the most heard about form, and that its what most people seem to do, but theres more to it then that.
I know people that have cut, and cut so severely theyve severely damaged nerves or muscles. And I know people who have cut and never even managed to go deep enough to draw blood. Never wanted to draw blood.
For some people self harm is about the act itself, that is what gives them the calm and their release that they desperately need. For others its about what comes after wards, the wound, the healing, the pain. I know a lot more people in the second catagory that don't self, but self harm copiously. I know even more of those people who have never told a single person until I found out, because they dont want the stigma that they don't self harm because they don't cut.

Self harm can be mental. But even physical self harm has a lot of different forms. Cutting is one of them. Burning is another. Scratching. Hair pulling. Bruising. Biting. Stabbing yourself. Pulling muscles. Some eating disorders. Breaking bones. I know someone who's gone into almost every catagory. I fit into a few of them myself.
I scratch primarily. It use to be small wounds, as they were the ones that I could easily lie about and say 'its just bug bites'. Sometimes they were bug bites, but that just gave me an even more legitimate excuse to scratch them, to scratch into my skin until I bleed and my nerves were so raw I couldn't move my limb without crying. Lately I've moved onto larger wounds. An inch around. Or more even. I can't lie about them any more but enough people know what I do that I don't need to. The scratches heal over into skin like scabs, that are so excrusiatingly painful to pick off, but thats what I like.
I bite as well. Sometimes I do it for pleasure. But other times I'll do it as a substitute for scratching. Biting the same area over and over again over hours until my entire arm of leg will bruise and bleed a little from the force of it. Self bruising I do as well, although of course I dont bruise easily so thats only when I desperately need something that I can do that I can hide.

I dont cut. It gives me nothing. For me its not about the act itself. It calms me, but its nothing compared to what I get in opening up wounds or worseneing bruises as they try to heal over weeks or months.
What hurts is when my friend congratulated me for not cutting and said how proud she was of me that I wouldn't stoop that low.
She knows about my other habits. Doesn't she see what they do to me?

Mental self harm is harder to see. I work myself into a state often enough. I know I'm just hurting myself more but sometimes I cant help it. I'll convince myself of the stupidest things, but to me they are real, and it takes me days for people to calm me down once I hit that level. I know I'm self destructive. When I'm in a bad way I'll seek out people I know will hurt me more, I'll say things I know people cant argue with honestly (like how ugly I am) so that I get hurt by it. I'll call people I know cant help so I feel guilty about it. I know all this and yet I cant help it.

I have a set of knives. They are hidden around my room. Comfort items. People keep trying to get me to throw them away, and every time I bring them back into my room I get yelled at, but I cant help it. I've been trying to explain to them, that its not just as easy as throwing them out and stopping self harming. Its an addiction any bit as real as smoking, or drugs, or gambling, or any of the other things people can get addicted to, and can be just as deadly. Its not as easy as just stopping and breaking it like that. Thats almost impossible to do. I know a person who hasn't cut in years but still has his blades stashed around his room, because trying to remove even one of them turns him into a mess.

I know I need to stop. But I can't. I have one person. One. And I love him, and I thank him for all he has done for me, but he cant hug me when I need it, he cant bandage my hands when they have to be. I wish nothing more then that I was closer to him so that we could be there for each other.
but I have no one else. Nothing else. Besides self harm. Its a stupid way to look at it but really, I don't know any other way, and nor do many people I know. I know so many people that have self harmed over the years, over the time I have known them and before that as well, Some of them I blame myself for, others I dont. Cant. You can never know what the person beside you is doing to themselve and I have to wonder why so many people don't seem to care. Society has a don't see dont care mentality. If only we could all see the scars on the person beside us. Scars from fingernails, and vomit, and fire, and walls, and fists, and teeth, and everything we do to ourselves that doesn't need a blade.

It hurts when people tell me I don't self harm, or that its not real self harm. All I want to do is scream at them 'cant you see'? All I want them to do is understand.
Cutting maybe a form of self harm, and perhaps one of the more dangerous ones, but its not the most deadly or the most damaging.



(I'll probably comment on this post again another day, reading back on it when I'm a bit more with it. BUt I needed to say it. Someone needed to.)

[Koren]

I should be in a panicky mess because he won’t text or answer his phone
I should be desperate to hear from him just to know he’s okay
I should be apologetic and regretful for the horror of my words, when I didn’t mean it at all
I should ask about his girl because I know how much he loves her, and therefore I should care too
I should feel guilt over what I just did to myself
I should be aware of the stupidity of doing even more
I should feel the pain from the cuts on my wrists, all fifty of them
I should be watching my words and not playing around online with people
I should be angry and enraged over what she did to me
I should feel betrayed after she made me care again, when I know I shouldn’t have
I should scream and cry and make her understand what she did
I should hate her and myself and everything because I know the futility of love
I should apologize to him for my rudeness and walking away, I couldn’t stand seeing her behind him
I should call him and make him understand before she can get to him
I should be a broken mess to get the pain out and move on
I should be furiously trying to find someone to wake me up
I should kill myself and just get it over and done with

But I’m not
I don’t feel any of this
I just don’t care any more



(next couple of posts once i recover should be on the effect of depression enhanced loniless and on mental self harm, also in a couple of weeks i'll be posting my first music based post, talking about the effect that can have)

[Koren]

Unfortunetly, bullying through facebook, and even through tumblr and other sites, especially being an anon, has become somewhat of a cool fad at the moment.
And I have to say, so has this cue card facebook thing. You only ever heard about the girls and guys that killed themselves after doing a video like that.
A girl that recent killed herself here in australia got a lot of publicity because of her video like that, and she had a lot of mental health issues on the side of depression as well, but all I can remember is the fact that she use to bully me and others. Im sick of seeing her name everywhere.
And more then that, I'm sick of 'my friends' mourning her, when they didn't even use to like her, but they did know exactly what she did to me. Its horrible yes, horrible that she reached that point and that anons caused her to try again, and she suceeded. I wish she'd never been through psychosis, I wish she'd never been miserable, and I wish she wasn't dead, even as much as I hate her, I wish that.
But I just cant find it in my heart to be sad for someone who was part of the reason id wanted to die previously, for someone who had actually told me I'd be better off alone and to get away because I was toxic.
Im sorry for her family, but I cant be sorry for her. And I hate myself for that.
I hate the way that even bullying and suicide and even self harm has a steyro type now. Steryotypes should not apply to stuff like this. Never. This is widespread yes, but it shouldn't be common, and it shouldn't be a fad.
And all I can think about is the fact that because I won't do a video like that, I've been told by a lot of people I'm a nobody and when I kill myself I'll just end up forgotten. And its true. I'll just be another statistic. Her and those like her will have their face plasted over TV's and newspapers and the internet, and I'll be forgotten, I know it. I'm already being forgotten by people I know now, people who use to mean everything to me, who still do, and I'm still alive, and so are they, and they've forgotten me. So how much worse will it be when I'm dead?

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The above was in responce to a conversation happening in the Things that Make you feel negitive in some form of fashion thread, where we were talking about how bad people abuse others with words, even over the internet, and how much more we are hearing about suicide and cue card you tube vids because of it.
It also however ties in very nicely to my topic about loniless.

Loniless is a killer. It really is. When you reach the point where you know, whether that knoweldge is real or percieved, as it is often impossible to tell, that no one cares about you, that no one misses you. That no one would notice if you suddenly werent there. But its just as bad knowing that you dont have anyone to reach out to, that you spend your weekends alone because everyone else is busy with better people then you, that there will never be anyone to love or desire you, no matter how much love you have to give out to the world.

Okay... Im feeling a bit numb at the moment. Shits been happening and all that. And its hard to talk about loniless when you're too numb to actually feel lonely at the moment. I'm doing this by memory, not by emotion.

One of the worst things with loniless for me was not realising just how lonely I really was. As a child I had convinced myself that I wasn't worth anything, that I didn't deserve to have friends, and that I was okay with that. I wasn't okay when my old friends became my tormenters though, and when people were taken from my by lies and deception. I wasn't okay for the first two weeks of school, being the only person with no one, sitting there alone in the middle of the junior school area, with a book, because it was the only friend I had. I wasn't really okay with my mother and others convincing everyone that I hated to be touched, when really on the inside I was screaming for affection, but I was conditioned to think they were right so I pushed everyone away.

I'm not okay with my ten year friend abandoning me. (Fuck, now I feel it, now I'm crying). I'm not okay with him assuring me he's still there, and then turning his back on me, week after week after week after week. Im NOT okay with him telling my 'sister' that hes glad he talks to her because she's the only person he can talk honestly with. What about me? I use to be that person. I'm the one who helped him through school and depression. I was that person until he abandoned me. He never talks to me until I remind him that he hasn't in six months. He has everyone now. And I have no one. He assossiates with those who bully me and doesn't see anything wrong with it. And I keep thinking that if I've lost him, everyone else is just waiting to follow.
I want to scream at him, and tell him how much I hate him for abandoning me and leaving me alone, again, and i want to hit him and hurt him and do to him what he did to me. But I cant. Instead I just get to suffer. And cry, again.

Loniless is thinking that others are better then you, no matter how many more flaws and pains they have. Loniless is being sure that your 'friends' hate you and dont want to be with you. Its thinking you're a burden and an annoyance, a monster and a freak, and that you'll never have anyone, no matter how many times one person or a hundred people pull you back from the brink and hold you hand and whisper how much they love you and need you. Loniless isn't a physical situation. Loniless is mental and that makes it a million times harder to deal with.

And when you're lonely you know you'll be forgotten.
Its one of the only things I'm scared of....


(again, when im more stable I may come back and comment on this, clean it up. Having a break down in the middle of it all didn't help the flow and consistancy of it at all I'm sure.)

[Koren]

Today feeling abandoned and lost

Before I get started on this, I wanted to clarrify something about this blog.
As I said in the first post there is a selfish compodent behind this, in that I am using it as some place to go where I can just talk at times and do what I need to do to get by sometimes without impeding on people.

But what I also wanted to do was provide more of an insight.
There are a lot of places out there where people can go to find out about depression, about helping people and the biology of it and how to get out of it and even people expressing their thoughts on it and how to cope with it.
Most of the places you see talk about depression talk about the well known aspects of it, such as the sadness and the misery and the way you slide down into it constantly.
But theres only a few places where you can look and see the thought process that goes on behind that. I don't want to be just another person talking about dealing with it and surviving, because for me its not about that. Im trying to give people a better view of what goes on in my head on my bad days and just generally (even though I havent gotten around to that yet). You can understand the biology and symptoms of it all you want, the physical side of it, but the mental side is just as bad and difficult to manage and thats the insight Im trying to give.

Comments and discussion are ALWAYS welcome.



"There are people out there having it worse then you"

That is one of the absolute worst things that you can say to someone with depression.

For some people yes it may for, for the sad or the self pitying. For people who are just having an off day maybe for them it will work because they will be able to use that as inspiration to lift themselves up, especially those that are all giving and those who go out and work for charities and volenteer and all of that. Sometimes that is the best thing that you can do is to remind them of all the people that they help in that way.

But for a lot of people with full on depression it can be crippling.
I've had it said to me. I've been told to get over myself and to think about the people that are worse off.
I've been told I dont have a right to be depressed because I dont have cancer, or a serious disease. Because I dont have massive responsibility like a child, or a house or such things. Because I have food and a roof over my head and technology and money. Because i have people around me and blood family still alive.
I've been told time and time again that because I have these things I cant be depressed because think of the African children and the terminally ill and all those who dont have a choice and keep going regardless.

It doesn't help. The only thing that it does is that it never fails to make me feel worse. It makes me remember that maybe I dont have a reason to feel this bad. That maybe I am just being pathetic and useless and hopeless. maybe I am just being a miserable mess. And as such only furthers my depressive state.

If I dont have a right to feel this bad, why do I do so anyway?
I ask myself that everytime someone tells me that I dont have a real reason to be depressed because there are people out there in worse states that fight more then me. I never come up with an answer other then more self hate for it.

Now obviously the start of this thread was specifically about this question. But it can be applied in other ways as well. 'Pretty' people can, and are allowed to, be depressed as much as the 'ugly' people. The well off as much as the poor. The caucasian as much as the black. The male as much as the female. The straight as much as the gay. The ____ as much as the ____. Everyone has a right to be able to feel how they want without being attacked by it.

What isn't okay is when people use that as an excuse to make others feel bad. Something Ive learnt lately is that I need to stop accepting bullshit from people just because I am worried about making them feel bad and triggering their depression etc. I dont treat people badly, but I take a lot of shit from people and put it on myself.
It caused a lot of problems for me, some of which I am only just realising now. Everything from furthering my paranoia, to deepending my depression, removing the last traces of my self worth. Everything.
But I did this because I was constantly told that it wasn't okay for me to be angry with people because everything was my own fault.
I do still this because I was told I didnt have the right to feel how I did

Dont tell people to be aware of those that are worth off.
Most of the time they already know it.
Most of the time its part of why they have such hate for themselves.

[Viper]

I know this is kind of of topic in comparison to Koren's recent posting. But just to reiterate what Koren said, there is no fixing scars. Yes physically they can be taken away...but some are so deep that they stay with you for ever.

I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder(PTSD)....or at least thats what my shrink told me. I posted in Seren and Shooter6806's blog about my dealing with domestic violence...but you never hear what happens after its over.

I dont like being labeled with a disorder, most days I like to believe I dont have anything wrong with me....but I know I do. They say 'knowing you have a problem is the first step in overcoming it', well, its not always true. Sometimes when you think you have a problem...you become trapped by it.

I have an innate fear of men. Online, men are just a click away from being gone. But when face to face with one in real life...its difficult. Even the men I have been in relationships with have complained that I am 'cold' or 'emotionless' yet when im online...I dont see that I am.

Another problem I have is I have flash backs as well as black outs. Luckily only a small percentage has been public...but there is nothing like waking up in jail and a cop telling you that you went certifiably insane in the middle of a convinience store.

I dont want someone to fix me or comfort me...I just want people to know that some traumas are never truly forgotten or healed. It bleeds and bleeds and bleeds and sometimes...one will get lucky enough to find that little slice of peace inside their mind and attempt to sew the wound.

Though I cant say that im healed and I dont fight with my 'problems'...but i try really hard most days to put it behind me.

Thanks for this blog Koren, though I hate to know you battle with problems of your own...I glad to see that the few of us who do battle...are not alone in it.

-Karia

[Koren]

I am so sorry it took me so long to get back to you. Personal business kept me away from this blog but also personal confusion which I will go into a bit below.

You dont need to thank me for my blog, although I would like to thank you for responding and opening up. Unfortunetly scars are one of those things which arent always visible and dont always appear all the time. Scars can come in a variety of forms, looks and functions and we dont always see them for what they truely are. Not even us. And sometimes having them pointed out doesn't always preclude the fact that it will change our behavior in a variety of ways and not always ways that we can control.
And as you so right fully pointed out, these topics dont always fit solely into depression. I am a firm believer that mental disorders overlap a lot and as such care needs to be taken, of all scars, not just ones of a particular shape or color.

Again, Thank you so much for posting and sharing your insight,


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Unfortunetly though this will be the last post as I have made the decision to close down this blog.

Originally as I said I wanted this to be a place not nessisarily about the history and cause of problems like depression, but about the effects that they have on our every day lives and the inate thinking of people who have it. I also wanted to have some positives thrown in here and other side thoughts.
However I feel like I have made this whole thing too broad for myself and as such was having trouble deciding on topics and never got around to actually posting any of the good stuff because I was always debating if it fit where it was going to be.

As such I have decided that a more focused direction would be needed, which I also believe deserves a clean slate.

I want to thank everyone who read this blog for even just looking and I hope it brought a bit more understanding about various topics, or even I hope that you just got something out of it. If you want to talk about my blog at all I invite you to PM me.

But for now, thanks for reading, and see you all later.

Koren