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Tag: inner-strength

  • good morning on this wonderfully sunny Monday

    good morning on this wonderfully sunny Monday

    I’ve been struggling with depression for several years now. It’s been… varied. There was a time, about three years ago, when it was really hard — to put it mildly. I’m not sure what was worse — the feeling of my head being attached to a massive lump of meat, which had no strength to move and just wanted to lie there and slowly fade away — or the comments from someone I considered close at the time: “you’re creating your own problems.” Constant crying or — what I then thought was irrational — aggression. I cried watching a cheesecake commercial, and when the mascarpone whipped cream for my divine daughter’s favorite chocolate cake wouldn’t whip. I kicked the freezer drawer and broke it because it wouldn’t close. I couldn’t sit without leaning against a wall. I had no energy at all, like I really was that lump of meat — beef — and I didn’t even know why. I couldn’t sleep, then I’d wake at 3 or 4 a.m., unable to fall back asleep. In the morning, I couldn’t get out of bed. I didn’t wash my hair for weeks. I lost weight.
    In my case, the breaking point came with a thought — just a thought — that flashed through my mind as I was driving down toward the roundabout in Piekary. I was supposed to yield to a truck. I thought: “I’m just seconds away from peace. All I have to do is close my eyes for a moment, not brake.” That thought terrified me! I have a huge will to live — enormous! I always have. I called the therapist who had once helped me understand myself. I ended up seeing a specialist. It turned out I was in a pretty critical state, on the edge of being hospitalized.

    Shock! I was convinced that — as usual — I’d handle my “various things” on my own.
    Shock!
    I didn’t talk about it for a long time.
    Now I wonder why.
    I don’t know.

    On Friday, I attended the funeral of my uncle.
    The only thing that truly stayed with me was his grieving wife.
    Now, with the perspective of therapy, treatment, and three years of professional care,
    I can see that if I had listened to that fleeting thought back at the roundabout,
    I might have gained the peace I so longed for —
    but at the cost of someone else’s unbearable pain,
    someone who might have wept over my departure.
    Perspective.

  • May 2023

    May 2023

    I think the demons have come back. I can’t sleep, though I wouldn’t get out of bed, trying to catch up on sleep during the day. At night, they crawl out, slip free — determined — to defeat me. I clench my hands like I’m getting ready for the ring, unconsciously. My fingers go numb, tingle. My teeth ache terribly from grinding my jaw. My whole face feels glued shut. At night, I hear the steady beating of my own heart. It keeps working, as if nothing’s wrong, as if it’s trying to tell me: hang on, things are better now, hang on…
    I wonder what it would be like to not hear that pumping blood anymore. I can’t eat. Yesterday my dad said to me: “You’re making a martyr of yourself,” and I’m just gathering strength. To wash my hair.

  • November 2020

    The worst is when the Demons take over your mind. You sort of know it’s happening, you sort of want to fight it – for the sake of your child, for others… But deep down, all you really think about is letting it all go. Giving up. Resting. Not having to feel, not having to think. Not clenching your teeth, which have been aching since dawn from the constant tension in your jaw. I’m not myself. I can’t control my emotions – swinging between aggression and tears, which endlessly lick my face like they’re a being entirely separate from me. I have no control. Not over this, not over myself, not over anything. I don’t know how to take care of my mind anymore, because this is no longer me. The biochemical shifts in my brain have taken over, swallowed me whole. I’m drowning in this fucking numbness I’ll probably never get out of. I want to scream for help without a sound. Can anyone hear me?! I doubt it. All I hear is: “You bring these problems on yourself.” Maybe they’re right.

    Honestly, I don’t know what’s worse – “The Man Who Left” during the hardest moment of my life, when I needed his scent more than anything, or me, slowly giving in, accepting whatever life throws at me: financial mess, the looming fear of a terrifying illness. “You’re great, but it’s also great without you.” Am I really that hopeless?! Probably. I’ve always felt like I don’t belong in this world. A world full of excess, illusion, and lies. Narcissistic arrogance. All that glitter for show – everything, and yet nothing that truly matters. I fell for the bait of attention. Me and my blind soul. Too bad the illness didn’t give a shit about my blindness. Fuck it.

    I claw my way back up only to crash back into the shit again. Sometimes from high up – and they say: “Your energy and constant cheerfulness are impossible not to love.” Cute. Fucking great. Inside, it’s a total shitshow. Only I know it. And the doctor, who tries to save me with prescribed pills so I don’t hurt myself: “Please eat, for your brain.” I don’t want to eat. I just want to sleep. I can’t tell anyone. I whisper to my Beloved Furball: “Help me, help me survive! I think I want to live.” Bullshit. The only thing on my mind is how to disappear. But I can’t tell anyone. They’ll say I’m wallowing – because of the money problems, because of the maybe-real cancer, because someone who meant more to me than I wanted to admit left. Fuuuck-this-shit.